Dave Isaac

@davegisaac

VOORHEES — Ever since he was a little kid, Dale Weise was clutch.

Those big-time goals — like the one he scored in overtime of a 2014 playoff series for the Montreal Canadiens to beat Tampa Bay or the two he tallied in the next round against Boston — were commonplace.

There was a time though, before he earned the nickname “Dutch Gretzky,” where Weise thought that kind of play was behind him.

Sure, he almost scored 30 goals in juniors, but so did lots of guys in the NHL. The Vancouver Canucks didn’t see that player in him. They asked him to fight, play fewer than 10 minutes a night and not do much of anything outside of hitting everything that moved.

The 2008 fourth-round pick of the New York Rangers wasn’t sure he even could play with the puck anymore. He was already on his second NHL team by 2011 when Vancouver claimed him on waivers.

“You get in that role where you have to accept it,” said Weise, a right wing who signed a four-year, $9.4 million contract with the Flyers on July 1 as a free agent. “There’s plenty of guys in the American League who could play in the NHL, but they just don’t accept a certain role. That’s the difference. You have to find a niche on a team that works for you and gets your foot in the door. That’s what worked for me. I fully accepted it and got my mind wrapped around it.

“That’s all I thought I could do and then I went to the Netherlands, came back, got traded and my confidence grew from there. I got back to doing what I knew I could do.”

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Weise, a Winnipeg, Manitoba, native, was with the Canucks when the NHL’s most-recent lockout hit in the fall of 2012. Figuring it would take a while to smooth things over, Weise told his agent, Allain Roy, that he’d play wherever the first call asking for his services came from.

“Uh, are you sure?” Roy asked his client.

“Yeah, I’ll go anywhere,” Weise told him. “I just want to play. I just want to have some fun. I’ve never gone to Europe. I’ll go explore.”

Only half an hour later, Roy called him back with an offer from the Tilburg Trappers. The next day, he was on a plane headed to the “wool capital of the Netherlands.”

Legend grew when Weise had 22 goals and 48 points in 19 games before the lockout ended. He was anointed “Dutch Gretzky,” although the Canucks saw “Canadian Barbarian” when he returned to Vancouver for a year and a half before a trade sent Weise to Montreal.

“I’m looking on the other team going, ‘I’ve got to fight this guy today’ or ‘I’ve got to do this or that.’ It was a mindset,” said Weise, who got to the area Monday night and has begun informal practices with his new Flyers teammates. “Going over there (to the Netherlands) it was kind of like playing men’s league. You’re going out there, making plays, having fun. For me it kind of got my mind back to having a little confidence, knowing I’m a good player.”

After the trade, Weise started feeling like a hockey player again instead of a semi-goon, a role he could tell was becoming endangered in the NHL and one he wasn’t particularly fond of anyway.

He scored 10 goals in his first full season with the Habs and 14 last season before he was traded to Chicago as a rental player. He didn’t get as much of an opportunity with the Blackhawks as he’d have liked, which is why the Flyers seemed to be a good fit for him.

General manager Ron Hextall was the first one to call Weise on July 1. He said he didn’t have a lot of money to spend, but that Weise was still a target. Weise’s good friend Danny Briere, still working for the Flyers, backed Hextall’s pitch of the young defensemen on the rise and also suggested where he, his wife Lauren and two kids could live.

“The hockey world, guys make you feel so comfortable,” said Weise, who only personally knows Michael Del Zotto from their time with the New York Rangers and is basically a stranger to the rest of the roster. “Everyone knows what it’s like to join a new team and stuff like that so guys make you feel welcome and guys go out of their way. Same thing here. As soon as I signed, (Claude Giroux) called me right away and stuff like that. Guys make you feel welcome, and that’s huge coming into a new team.”

The Flyers would like to make him so comfortable that “Dutch Gretzky” makes a comeback. They signed him as a depth player but know he’s capable of more.

“I think Dale Weise is going to add a lot to this team,” Flyers president Paul Holmgren said last week. “He’s a bigger body. He’s kind of a third-, fourth-line guy but he can also play higher up in the lineup with some of your skill players if you get into a jam. He’s a quality, quality kid. Plays the game hard, plays the game right. I think that’s a big addition for us.”

Dave Isaac; (856) 486-2479;disaac@gannettnj.com.