The 22-year-old registered five goals and 15 points in 58 games for the Coyotes last season, and was sent to the AHL for a 16-game stint with a view to finding his game.
Those lowly numbers came after Duclair reached 20 goals and 44 points in 2015-16, demonstrating the offensive acumen Arizona was hoping for in acquiring him by trade from the New York Rangers in a deal centered around defenseman Keith Yandle.
Duclair will be aiming to rediscover that form on this one-year contract in hopes of securing a longer and more lucrative deal when he hits restricted free agency again next summer.
Here's a closer look at the bottom of the page, which includes a heartfelt message from the club's former captain and all-time leader in goals, points, and games played:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
