Weight not skating on empty

EDMONTON, Canada -- The topic was gas in the tank -- not literally speaking, of course -- but the depth of the reserves of the newly minted Duck, 30-something center Doug Weight.

Weight, acquired from the St. Louis Blues on Dec. 14, scored his first goal for his new team against one of his old teams, the Oilers, leading the Ducks to a 2-1 victory Thursday night.

It was the game-winner, coming with 3:39 remaining, from the edge of the left circle, off a needle-threading pass from linemate Bobby Ryan.

The other goal for the Ducks, at 12:38 of the second period to make it 1-1, came from Corey Perry, who hit the benchmark 20-goal plateau before the halfway point of the season. He had 17 in 82 games last season.

There used to be things you could count on happening on Ducks trips here: Edmonton would win and former Oilers and Ducks defenseman Chris Pronger would get booed by the fans at Rexall Place.

Oh, well. At least there are still those Pronger moments.

The Ducks have now won four consecutive games and have not lost in regulation (4-0-1) since the return of their spiritual leader, defenseman Scott Niedermayer.

This was a particularly significant hurdle for the Ducks in the Scotty II era. Victories in Edmonton have been exceedingly rare, one in the last 11 regular-season meetings before Thursday. Apparently, the solution was to gather enough former Oilers.

Weight’s last goal came against the Oilers on Dec. 11 when he was still with the Blues, and he now has scored eight goals in 18 games against his former teammates.

“It’s a coincidence a little bit,” he said. “Certainly you like to come back in this building. . . .

“It took probably the first three years, I don’t know why. I had a lot of great times here and played good hockey here. The older you get, you want to enjoy it more instead of just being nervous about it.”

There was a school of thought that Weight perhaps didn’t have much left when he arrived in Anaheim in the trade sending Andy McDonald to the Blues, especially because Weight had four goals in 29 games in St. Louis this season. Which led to the questions about the gas tank.

“I had gas in the tank. It’s funny,” Weight said. “There’s no excuses, and you never want to come off like a guy that’s making excuses. I didn’t score and you’ve got to score. My job is to produce.

“But I’ve never been so snake-bitten. I’ve had droughts -- where you pass to a guy and it hits the post. Nothing can go in for you. I had that going on. When it comes to eight to 10 games, when you start reading it, hearing it and feeling it. You change your game and you don’t think you do.

“I definitely take responsibility for every drought, every time I haven’t scored in my career. Is the gas out of my tank? No.”

He laughed when he was asked whether the tank was seven-eighths full. “I’m 36, I’ve played 1,100 games,” Weight said.

Maybe his linemates, Ryan and Chris Kunitz, are rubbing off on him. Or he’s helping them, producing “secondary offense,” that Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle spoke about after the game.

“For me, being an American, he’s somebody I’ve always looked up to,” Ryan said of Weight. “It’s nice to get feedback; every shift there’s something new for us to try to do. There’s a lot of communication.”

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com