Five Maple Leafs Takeaways: It’s fun to score goals and win games so keep doing that (+)

Since the Toronto Maple Leafs had won 11 of 13 games going into Wednesday night’s game in Los Angeles, it felt like nitpicking to point out that the team was having trouble scoring during 5-on-5 play.

Like, it’s one thing if you’re trying to explain why the team isn’t winning. It’s another to say that they could be winning by even more.

In any case, the Maple Leafs have not been scoring much during 5-on-5 play and it was a small concern. The reason to be confident in Toronto’s offence, despite a recent lack of production, is that their shooting percentage during 5-on-5 play was impossibly low – ranking 31^st over their past 10 games. Those things tend to balance out, at least from the extremes, and with the Maple Leafs creating a lot of chances, it was really a matter of time for pucks to start going into the net.

“I thought we did some good things, in terms of how we want to attack the net, increase our volume a little bit,” said head coach Sheldon Keefe after a 6-2 win against the Kings. “But really, I don’t know if it’s just a matter of some of the luck coming back around our way.”

“I don’t know if we did anything a whole lot different than what we have been doing in other games,” Keefe continued. “But it was certainly nice to see it go in.”

“To comment on the road,” said Keefe. “It was really nice here for me – and we have had a little bit of it – but being out here in L.A., there was a lot of blue and white in the building tonight. Lots of noise, lots of Leafs fans. That was terrific to see.”

As they say, everyone loves a winner.

“Winning is very fun,” said Jason Spezza. “It makes a fun atmosphere around the room. If makes practices fun. It makes off-days fun. When you’re winning it seems like everybody is feeling good.”

“I think our team is coming closer together as a group,” Spezza continued. “We have a lot of chemistry through these wins and it creates a belief that we are winning close games, we are winning games the right way.”

To the takeaways…