Follow me on twitter Follow @GunnerStaal I cannot lie, I am very excited. The reason for the excitement is because I got my hands on the latest up to date zone entry and zone exit data from Corey Sznajder's amazing manual data tracking project.Corey is literally watching every single hockey game(!) from last year and manually charting everything that transpires in those games. It is an incredible undertaking and one that has provided some of the best data to date. I believe Corsi/Fenwick is a great starting point but the zone entry/exit information he is charting takes it to another level.You can choose to donate to Corey's project by clicking here . If you hit a certain donation level you too can have access to all of data he has charted to this point (~45-50 games).The ability to carry the puck under control at both blue lines is proving to be one of the best indicators of why certain teams and certain players are successful. It is also proving why other teams and players are much less successful. Today I am going to focus on the Penguins defensemen from last season and how they did exiting the Penguins defensive zone.Which players were able to successfully contribute to a controlled zone exit and which players were prone to turning the puck over or icing it?Before I begin I think it would be fair to mention that my access to this data is incredibly fresh. It is going to take some trial and error for me to figure out the nuances of what these numbers are telling us and what conclusions can be drawn. I feel like I have a decent grasp on things, but I am going to be going through a learning process and hopefully over time (hopefully not too long) I will be able to pinpoint my conclusions accurately.With that said let's dig into the dataThat green line moving across the chart is the team average amongst Penguins defensemen. The reason that I am keeping it limited to defensemen is because there is a significant difference between the success rates of forward vs. defensemen (forwards have higher success rates).The black numbers near the bottom are the amount of touches each player had in the defensive zone. This is basically the sample size for each player. The higher the sample size the more you can trust the data. Remember, this is data taken from the first 45-50 games of the 2013-14 season.First thing to notice here is that all the players above the green line are defensemen that you would consider to have puck skills. The two lowest players on the chart are defensemen that lack puck skill, Brooks Orpik and Rob Scuderi.Kris Letang is a beast and so was Matt Niskanen. Paul Martin is really solid, especially considering a lot of his minutes came with Orpik and their minutes came against top competition.Surprising to me was how low Maatta was on this chart considering the amount of time he played with Matt Niskanen.Simon Despres and Deryk Engellend faced the easiest competition amongst Penguins defensemen and both have similar numbers here. Bortuzzo's quality of competition was a little bit tougher than those two and also sees a similar success rate.Brian Dumoulin has such a small sample size I can't really draw any opinions confidently from it.Rob Scuderi is a tire fire, not really anything else you can say. In fact, Rob Scuderi was a special kind of badWoofThose were the success rates, how about their turnover/icing rates?Chart works the same as the one above, the lines moving horizontally across the chart is the team average.Matt Niskanen once again looks really good but a caveat to his success is that he only faced the fifth hardest competition amongst Penguins defensemen. It will be interesting to see how he does in Washington if they increase the difficulty of his workload.Paul Martin was basically playing with one hand tied behind his back by being paired with Orpik, yet he still does a great job here.Kris Letang is slightly on the wrong side of the team average but when you take into consideration his incredible zone exit success rate from the other chart and the fact that he was paired with the worst zone exit defensemen in the NHL (Scuderi) for periods of time, you can understand how his numbers here could be elevated. Personally I would love to see the data on Letang when he was paired with Martin later in the season. I bet Letang's numbers are terrific.Orpik's turnover percentage isn't terrible but I have a feeling Paul Martin has a lot to do with that.Rob Scuderi owns the worst zone exit success rate, he also has a miserable turnover rate. The Calgary Flames were a punch line for the Deryk Engelland contract this past summer, but I'm fairly convinced that deal is better than Scuderi's. That really puts into perspective how bad Scuderi played last year.Again, Olli Maatta with some unimpressive numbers here. Also not helping his case is that he played with good teammates. He played with the second best teammates amongst Penguins defensemen last year. Even though his numbers aren't great on either chart it is important to remember that he was all of 19 years old playing big minutes in his rookie season. He has a bright future and these numbers will improve. He has the puck skills necessary to be very successful.Despres, Bortuzzo, and Engelland are all similar on this chart like they are on the first one.Something worth mentioning about this analysis is that these numbers are coming from a Dan Bylsma system of play. Bylsma's Penguins loved using the stretch pass and from what I gather Johnston's system will not be mirroring that approach. I would wager a guess that the Penguins defensemen will see a bump in their success rates playing under Johnston's puck support system. Short passes coupled with a focus on defensemen being an integral part of the rush should lead more controlled play with the puck. The Penguins won't have any shortage of defensmen who can handle the puck with Letang, Martin, Ehrhoff, Maatta, Despres, and Pouliot all above average in that department.I think all of this information that Corey has compiled is on the cutting edge and can really paint a vivid picture of what is happening on the ice. There is still so much more information to go through. Other data I will be perusing through will be how each Penguins defensemen does defending zone entries, as well as how Penguins players are at gaining the offensive zone.The amount of data is overwhelming and that is a great problem to have.Once again thank you to Corey Sznajder for slaving away and tracking around 8 games per day so we can have this data.There will certainly be more to come in the future.Thanks for reading!Follow me on twitter Follow @GunnerStaal