How Raleigh's Tyler Weiss grew from a plucky kid to an NHL draft prospect

Tyler Weiss doesn’t claim to be a good Fortnite player.

“I’m the best Fortnite player in the world,” he said, chuckling at his own bravado.

But that’s Weiss. It has been said the Raleigh native is a hockey player with some pluck to his game, to his personality. He’s a spirited, confident type, and hardly bashful.

Weiss, 18, said he loves Fortnite because of the creativity the wildly popular video game requires. He likes the action, the fast-changing survival scenarios.

That’s also what he loves about hockey. A member of the U.S. National Team Development Program in Plymouth, Mich., the past two years, the forward has used his creativity, playmaking and skating to compensate for a lack of size and draw the interest of NHL teams.

The NHL Entry Draft will be held this week in Dallas and Weiss will be drafted. Not on Friday, when the first-round picks — including some of his development teammates — are made. But sometime Saturday, when the second through the seventh rounds are held.

“Not a lot of players from Raleigh get drafted,” Weiss said in an interview. “I would like to think of it as giving kids hope from this area, that it is not impossible to get noticed. That they can be given the opportunity to play at the highest level and try to reach their dreams.”

Josh Wesley and Skyler Brind’Amour were two players raised in Raleigh who were drafted but with the obvious hockey connections — Brind’Amour is the son of Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour and Wesley’s father, Glen, was another former Canes star.

Weiss, 18, is the son of Shawn and Kelly Weiss of Raleigh. Shawn Weiss works as a project director at LabCorp, refereeing youth-league hockey games on the side, and Kelly has been a medical assistant with Raleigh Hand Center. They’ve made it work financially as Tyler rose through the junior hockey ranks.

“We only want great things for our kids, that they finally get to their dream or their love,” Kelly Weiss said.

Where Weiss might land in the draft is anyone’s guess, including his own. NHL Central Scouting had him rated 90th among North America skaters in its final pre-draft rankings, dipping from 71st in the mid-term rankings, but others have him higher.

“His skill level is off the charts,” said Seth Appert, Weiss’ coach with the USA Hockey U-18 team. “He can be a top-two line forward in the NHL with further maturation of his game, when he’s a more complete player.”

Weiss could be taken in the third or fourth rounds. While saying he wasn’t pleased with his season with the USA Hockey U-18 team, where it seemed at times the team’s potential first-round picks were being showcased, he believes he did help himself at the recent NHL scouting combine in Buffalo, N.Y.

Weiss was among 104 prospects invited to the combine and his measurements — 5-10 1/2 and 150 pounds — remain a concern to some scouts. He’s lankly and he’s light, although he says he now has his weight up to 160.

“But I was top 25 in six categories and some were the athletic events like jumping and pull-ups,” Weiss said. “I knew what I was capable of when the pressure was on and I thought I did more than I thought I could do, which is good.”

Weiss said he enjoyed the interview process at the combine, even in getting the hard stare from Philadelphia Flyers general manager Ron Hextall, who was seated next to Weiss but apparently never spoke during the interview.

“Everyone knows Ron Hextall is tough and I think he was trying to make me uncomfortable,” Weiss said. “I wasn’t. I was just myself. I knew it was all mental. I knew if they were interviewing you they must like you.”

Weiss said one team posed the question that if he was on a plane and the pilots suddenly died of food poisoning, who in the room would he want to try and fly the plane.

Weiss said he looked around the room and said, "Me."

Right answer?

"Right answer," he said.

Weiss said he had 22 interviews in all. Among those passing on him in Buffalo, he said: the Hurricanes, his hometown team.

“I mean, seriously, come on now,” he said, chuckling again.

The Canes have no third-round pick this year, trading forward Marcus Kruger and the pick to Arizona in May for forward Jordan Martinook and the Coyotes’ fourth-round selection. The Canes now have two fourth-rounders this year — the 96th and 104th overall picks.

Then again, the Hurricanes probably have a good handle on Weiss. They’ve scouted him. He has been training this summer with Bill Burniston, the Canes’ strength and conditioning coach, going through 90-minute workouts four times a week at the The Performance Academy in Raleigh.

“He’s hard on me, too,” Weiss added. “I love him.”

As Weiss worked out Tuesday, he did it beneath a sign that read "Unleash your potential." Burniston is trying to help him do that at the end of a hockey path that had Weiss briefly playing in the Junior Hurricanes program, for Raleigh's East Coast Eagles, to junior programs in Virginia, to the Greater Toronto Hockey League and finally in the NTDP.

"For the most part we're trying to develop strength, power, all the things that good hockey players have," Burniston said Tuesday. "We're trying to instill good nutrition, work ethic, all the things that will help him succeed in his career. His work ethic is phenomenal."

Weiss didn’t get as much ice time as he hoped for this past season with NTDP’s U-18 team, finishing with 12 goals and 19 assists in 58 games. He was on the U.S. team that won a silver medal in the U-18 World Junior Championship in Russia -- albeit getting a sinus infection and losing some weight -- and brought home gold from the U-18 Five Nations Tournament, played in Plymouth, Mich.

Weiss’ late goal gave the U.S. a 5-4 comeback victory over Russia in the Five Nations — that after a goal by Andrei Svechnikov gave the Russians a 3-0 lead.

“It was played on smaller ice and we’ve got bigger guys and we worked harder than the other teams,” Weiss said of the Five Nations.

Weiss had planned to play college hockey for Boston University this fall but has accepted a scholarship to Nebraska-Omaha. He said his college board scores were a bit too low for Boston U., which went through a coaching change after the Terriers’ David Quinn was named head coach of the New York Rangers in May.

But Weiss for now has his mind on the draft, saying he’s “really excited” about the trip to Dallas. "He's really focused," Kelly Weiss said.

The Weiss family will be there this week, six in all. Tyler’s older brother, Ryan, gave up hockey so that Tyler would have the financial wherewithal to play. They also have a younger brother, Patrick, 8.

Kelly Weiss said she recently was on Facebook when “8 years ago, see your memories” popped up. It was a post with her describing a conversation between mother and her then 10-year-old son in which she asked Tyler to “amaze” her.

“He said, ‘I’m going to be in the NHL’ and I asked ‘Why do you think you’re going to get that far?’” Kelly Weiss said. “Tyler said, ‘Because I believe in myself.’ “

Even at 10, he had that pluck.

This story was originally published June 20, 2018 at 11:13 AM with the headline "How Raleigh's Tyler Weiss grew from a plucky kid to an NHL draft prospect."