The following five players were some of the best fantasy performers last season, but their chances of repeating that success for another year are slim to none.

Mark Scheifele, Jets

Mark Scheifele arrived last season. He set career highs in both goals (32) and assists (50), finishing seventh in the NHL with 82 points. Scheifele is a great talent, and plays on an explosively offensive team, but it's highly unlikely he plays at a point-per-game pace once again.

Scheifele took less shots this past season (160) than the two seasons prior, resulting in an inflated shooting percentage of 20 percent. In fact, his shooting percentage was the third-highest in the league among players who took at least 100 shots. Unless he decides to start shooting more, he will not score 30 goals once again.

Scheifele had a bit of luck in the assist category too. Of his 50 assists, 24 of them were secondary helpers. Even with talented linemates such as Patrik Laine and Nikolaj Ehlers, a near even split of primary and secondary assists in not sustainable for a forward.

Given the depth of the center position in fantasy hockey, let someone else draft Scheifele in the early rounds of your draft.

T.J. Oshie, Capitals

Oshie set a career high in goals with 33 a year ago, despite missing 24 games due to injury. He led the league with a completely unsustainable 23.1 shooting percentage.

Oshie, 30, has been more of a 20-goal scorer over the course of his career, and even though he will likely spend most of 2017-18 alongside Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin, this 40-goal pace from last year seems like a total aberration. However, 25 goals should be well within his reach.

Justin Schultz, Penguins

There was plenty of hype surrounding Justin Schultz when he signed with the Edmonton Oilers as a college free agent in 2012. He failed to live up to the bill in Edmonton, but broke out in his first full season as a Penguin, recording 51 points in 78 games a year ago.

Of Schultz's 39 assists, a whopping 17 of them came on the power-play. With Kris Letang missing the bulk of last season, Schultz manned the point on Pittsburgh's top power-play unit alongside forwards Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, and Patric Hornqvist.

It's always a possibility the oft-injured Letang once again misses significant time, but if he doesn't, Schultz will be relegated to second unit power-play duties, and his point total will suffer because of it.

Mikko Koivu, Wild

Koivu was one of the luckiest players in all of fantasy hockey last year. Of his 40 assists, 26 of them were secondary assists - a completely unsustainable rate.

Even if he is somehow able to get lucky two years in a row, he doesn't carry enough upside in any other category to warrant a selection outside of the final few rounds.

Jimmy Howard, Red Wings

Injuries limited Howard to just 26 games last year, but he was spectacular when healthy, posting career bests in both goals-against average (2.10) and save percentage (.927).

Had Howard played a full season, he likely would have came down to earth, but he will be overdrafted because of those sparkling numbers from a year ago.

The Red Wings were a bad team last year, and they project to be even worse this year, further cementing Howard's status as a regression candidate.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)

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Tyler Johnson is not a fan of missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

For the first time since 2013, and for the the first time since he made a permanent jump to the NHL, his Tampa Bay Lightning failed to qualify for the postseason, and Johnson isn't keen on missing out on future quests for the Cup.

"Something I'd rather never do again," he told Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times.

Johnson, who signed a seven-year extension worth $35 million in July, used this extended offseason to recuperate from a series of injuries that have plagued him over the past couple of years, including a broken wrist suffered during the 2015 Cup Final and lower-body injuries that kept him from helping the team make a late push for a playoff spot this past season.

With training camp only a couple of weeks away, Johnson says he feels "10 times better" than he did at this point last year, and sees value in being able to rest after previous long playoff runs.

"Injuries come when your body gets fatigued, that's pretty much what happens," Johnson said. "Sometimes you get some unlucky things here and there, but a lot of times it's fatigue. In a way, it was nice to have that break to relax. I've never had that before.

"But those summers are way too long," he added. "I'd rather not have them."

Tampa Bay went deep in the playoffs in both 2015 and 2016, but missed out in 2017 by a single point despite dealing with a number of man-games lost due to injury, most notably by captain Steven Stamkos.

The long summer, although not a longed-for result, should help the team get back to full strength and into the ranks of Cup contenders.

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Without having played a single game, the Vegas Golden Knights are racking up points.

The expansion franchise's Twitter account is drawing rave reviews for the way those behind it interact with fans and take aim at the future opposition. Perhaps the finest work to date came at the expense of the San Jose Sharks, whose attempt to one-up the Golden Knights in the weather department resulted in a savage burn.

Vegas is, of course, referring to San Jose blowing a 3-0 playoff series lead to the Los Angeles Kings in 2014.

It may take come time for the Golden Knights to be competitive on the ice, but their social media game is certainly on point so far.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs proved a lot of NHL experts wrong last season when they qualified for the playoffs for the second time since 2004. And while the feat was no fluke, Auston Matthews knows that replicating last year's success will be a much tougher task this season.

"Only 16 teams make it and it’s not going to be easy," Matthews said Friday, according to the Toronto Sun's Lance Hornby. "We surprised some teams last year. That doesn’t really matter now. It’s a new season, they’re going to know that we have some firepower and they’re not going to take us so lightly."

While Toronto didn't make any major splashes on the free-agent market, they did add veteran depth, and, with the signing of Patrick Marleau, some winning caliber, as well.

"He‘s played 19 years, he’s been in the Stanley Cup finals, he knows how to win,” said Matthews. "When I talked to him he was pretty excited to be here."

"All three of those guys we picked up are veterans who can definitely help us now, as a young team. They’re guys who’ve been there. Ron Hainsey won a Cup last year (in Pittsburgh), Dominic Moore is a Toronto native and been in the league a while."

With another year of experience under is belt and new teammates in tow, Matthews expects both himself and his team to elevate their play for the 2017-18 campaign.

"As an individual and as a team, we all want to take a step forward this season."

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Despite missing the playoffs in three of the last five seasons, the Philadelphia Flyers are not in rebuild mode - if you ask general manager Ron Hextall, anyway.

Yes, the Flyers did pick with the second overall selection in this year's draft, but that was mostly due to a stroke of good luck, as the Flyers were a competitive team that finished only seven points short of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. A result that Hextall feels is a strong indication of the direction his club is going.

"You’re not rebuilding when you’re competitive," Hextall said, according to Sam Carchidi of Philly.com. "A rebuild, to me, is when you go to the bottom and you pick high, high, high - and essentially, you’re not trying that hard to win. That’s not in our DNA. We want to win. We want to win as many games as possible."

"We’re not going to go to the bottom of the league and pick first overall for four or five years. That’s no way to build culture. Our vision was to stay competitive, and build, and get younger - and that’s exactly what we’re doing."

Landing Nolan Patrick with the second overall pick obviously goes a long way to ensuring that vision come to fruition, but, Hextall realizes that at the end of the day, execution on the ice is all that matters.

"I can sit here and tell you 85 points, 105 points, but it really doesn’t mean anything," said Hextall. “What’s (important) is when our team starts the season and we go do it. Do we expect to make the playoffs? Of course we expect to make the playoffs."

" ... I’m comfortable saying we expect to make the playoffs because our team on paper is good enough to make the playoffs."

The Flyers drop the puck on their 2017-18 season Oct. 4 in San Jose.

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The following players are already adequate fantasy performers, but some basic analytics suggest they could make the leap from good to great this season if some more bounces go their way.

Aaron Ekblad, Panthers

Ekblad had a strange season. He played a career-low 68 games but set a career high with 225 shots. His career shooting percentage heading into the season was 7.7, but he only scored on 4.4 percent of his shots in 2016-17.

If he maintains his shot generation but scores on the 7.7 rate from his first two seasons, he projects to score 21 goals if he plays all 82 games.

It was also strange that despite having a prominent role on Florida's blue line, he only managed 11 assists after averaging 24 in his first two seasons. This was likely a mix of bad luck and the Panthers being without their two best forwards - Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau - for good chunks of the season.

Elias Lindholm, Hurricanes

Lindholm set a career high with 34 assists last season even though he missed 10 games due to injury. Thirty-four helpers is pretty good for a 22-year-old, but the data indicates his assist total could have been much higher.

Amazingly, 29 of the 34 were primary helpers. Most players have a much closer split in their assist totals. For example, Nicklas Backstrom had 32 primary assists and 31 secondary assists.

As the first-line center on what projects to be a much-improved Hurricanes team, there's a good chance Lindholm at least triples his secondary assist totals. With some luck in the shooting percentage department (his was 3.2 percent below league average last year), Lindholm is a darkhorse candidate to collect 70 points.

Frank Vatrano, Bruins

Vatrano is expected to be a mainstay on Boston's second line this season, and if Bruce Cassidy ever opts to split up the Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak trio, Vatrano could find himself playing alongside even more talented players.

His 11.74 shots on goal per 60 minutes was the eighth-highest mark in the NHL. The only problem was that he missed 38 games and averaged less than 14 minutes per contest.

Playing a full season in an expanded role, Vatrano could become a 30-goal scorer in 2017-18. After all, he did score 36 goals in 36 AHL games in 2014-15. The 23-year-old is a high-volume shooter with a knack for scoring.

Tanner Pearson, Kings

Pearson has consistently improved in his NHL career.

As you can see, his points per game and shots per game have increased with age and ice time. He turned this progression into 24 goals and 20 assists last year on what was a down season from many Kings forwards, including his linemate, Tyler Toffoli.

Pearson ranked seventh in the NHL with 66.4 shot attempts per 60 minutes at five-on-five. However, of his 364 total shot attempts, he only hit the net with 187. Pearson has a heavy shot, and, if he's able to harness it, goals will come in bunches for the former first-round pick.

The Kings made a coaching change in the offseason, replacing Darryl Sutter with John Stevens. It's possible Stevens will give Pearson a bump in his ice time, which could once again result in positive strides offensively for the 25-year-old.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)
(Stats courtesy: First Line Stats, Natural Stat Trick, Sporting Charts, and Hockey Reference)

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