Now that the fantasy playoffs are over, I hope that you won your league's championship to earn those sweet bragging rights amongst your friends or have managed to add a few extra bucks to your bank account. The most grueling part of the season is over and now you can look towards next season to begin trying to configure pieces to get back to championship status.

The point of this week's article is to outline a couple of players who are unrestricted free agents (referred to as UFAs) who can carry value going into next season for a list of reasons. Perhaps the player may be signing with a new team to gain a larger role, maybe the player will have their role changed based on the team's needs and their influx of younger players. The player may gain a better supporting cast to help bolster their own offensive based numbers. They may be playing under a new coaching regime in the upcoming season, and let's all remember that not every player will gel with each coaching staff. The plan is to look at all qualities of UFAs, as some folks play in leagues where the rosters reset year to year. Roster percentages aren't going to be too big of a factor in who I opt to discuss. As we get further into the summer, I plan on discussing things like contract expectations.

For this type of article, I won't be listing the player's career stats, only their current season stats as we are evaluating the player's current season and how those numbers may change going into next season.

#1) Vladimir Tarasenko – RW – New York Rangers
Contract: $3.75M – UFA this summer (Rangers have him at 50% retained currently)
Roster Percentages: Fantrax – 90%, ESPN – 91.41%

A player that we are all familiar with, who was a long-standing member of the St. Louis Blues up until part way through this season and traded in his Blues jersey for another shade of blue once he got traded to the New York Rangers, in Vladimir Tarasenko. A trade that bolstered the Rangers top-six forward group with a player who has a shoot-first mentality with 30+ goal upside each season. Tarasenko went from a middling team with support that was also sort of middling, to a team that has what many people consider to be elite talent scattered throughout their lineup.

While the Rangers have a lot of their core pieces locked up for a few more years, some of which would include players such as Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Adam Fox, Jacob Trouba and Igor Shesterkin. For the Rangers to be able to acquire the Blues forward, they had to have half of his salary retained to fit him on their books. At the price of $3.5 million for a player who has the upside that Tarasenko possesses, that carries tremendous value.

The big question that I have is where Tarasenko will end up after the season concludes, there are a lot of factors to consider with this one. The Rangers may have a core locked up, but they also have young players that they acquired with high draft picks who are on the cusp of becoming top-six players. Alexis Lafreniere, and Kaapo Kakko are the main two that I am thinking about here. At some point you can't have these young players sheltered in defensive minutes and you must allow them to grow to gain the confidence to take that next step for your club. If the Rangers disappoint and lose in the first round of the playoffs, maybe they opt to not want to bring Tarasenko back for another year. If they do go far and prove that they are legit contenders to win the Stanley Cup, maybe they will bring him back long-term. Patrick Kane is also a UFA, he will need a paycheck as well, how do the Rangers view Kane? Surely his status must come into account when you begin looking at what the team will do with Tarasenko.

Regardless of where Tarasenko ends up, he shouldn't see too much change in his numbers, mainly because he has control of where he goes, he isn't going to sign somewhere that is going to deploy him in a role that doesn't align with what he needs to succeed. He has been under multiple coaching staffs throughout his career, and he has always found a way to be a productive winger at the NHL level. If he signs away from the Rangers, his overall ceiling for point production may not be as high, but that isn't because of Tarasenko, that would be because the Rangers have a very good core around him, not every team can offer the same level of quality around him like New York can.

#2) Alex Killorn – LW – Tampa Bay Lightning
Contract: $4.45M – UFA this summer
Roster Percentages: Fantrax – 61%, ESPN – 47.9%

Killorn has been a thorn in opposing teams' sides for seems like his entire career with the Tampa Bay Lightning. His tenure with the Lightning may be coming to an end after this season. There have been trade rumors involving Killorn for some time now, combine that the state of Tampa Bay and their cap space, Killorn may be looking for a new home come the summer.

It doesn't seem feasible to be able to keep Killorn under contract, there is a lot of money shelled out to a lot of players across the roster. Some of which include the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, Victor Hedman, Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak (starting next season), and Andrei Vasilevskiy. All the players that I just listed would come ahead of Killorn on the depth chart of what players are the blocks that Tampa Bay is building with.

Killorn has been an excellent middle-six forward for the Lightning for many years and was a huge member of their championship winning teams, but the moment you take him away from these high-level players, his numbers are going to decrease. Killorn signed his current contract when he has 40 points after the 2015-2016 season, and ever since then he has scored below that threshold twice and has set career highs since. It is safe to say that Killorn is going to get a pay raise wherever he ends up landing through free agency (assuming that occurs of course). I don't believe teams would be looking at giving him a consistent top-six scoring role given that isn't the role he had in Tampa, and if a team does that, odds are it's a team that is looking at using him as more of a scoring threat as opposed to a complimentary piece.

If Killorn leaves Tampa, his individual salary is going to go up, the amount in which it will go up by, will make it so that he isn't that valuable in the fantasy realm as a depth scoring piece like he was during his tenure with the Lightning.

Sorry for the lack of article last week, I was battling a fairly bad sickness the last couple of weeks, along with transitioning to a new lifestyle as I have just moved to a new apartment. This is going to be a style of article that I will be doing periodically throughout the summer to just sort of touch base on some players that are getting new contracts, whether it be from their current team, or a new team.

If you're looking to discuss anything hockey with me, check out my Twitter account (@JamieMolloy_DH), as well as on the articles themselves!