Miles Gendron’s path to Ottawa Senators started with a toe-drag

PHILADELPHIA — Shawn McEachern was at the rink to perform a clinic, and young Miles Gendron tried to hold an impromptu one of his own. That chance encounter led to the defenceman being drafted by the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.

With no first-rounder thanks to the 2013 Bobby Ryan trade with Anaheim, the Senators skewed toward high-ceiling European and NCAA-track players with their Day 2 picks. That included third-rounder Gendron, whose prep coach at The Rivers School was McEachern, who played on the Senators' first playoff teams in the late '90s and early aughties.

Their association began with a then 13-year-old Gendron toe-dragging McEachern while the former pro was conducting a skills clinic in the Boston area. That led to McEachern recruiting the Shrewsbury, Mass., native to Rivers.

"He was playing hard and I wanted to impress him by making a couple of moves and one of them worked," said Gendron who turned 18 on Saturday. "He liked it.

"He's been so great for me," Gendron said of playing for the former NHLer. "He knows the game so well, the knowledge is not just on-ice, but off ice as well. He tells a lot of stories so I've heard a lot about the city of Ottawa as well.

"Coach McEachern tells a lot of stories so I've heard a lot about the city," Gendron added. "This is a pretty incredible birthday present, I love it.

"It's pretty crazy, I really didn't see it coming that early [No. 70 overall]. I was just sitting talking to my family and heard 'The Rivers School' and it was just unbelievable."

The Senators were the sole Canadian NHL team to not have a first-rounder. It top pick at No. 40 overall was Swedish junior Andreas Englund from Djugardens, the same club that produced current Sen Mika Zibanejad. Ottawa also used a 2013 fourth-rounder on another Djurgardens-developed player, wing Tobias Lindberg.

"I would describe myself as a physical player, a hard-working defenceman," said the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Englund. "A pretty defensive defenceman."

"I hope to have a great development camp this summer and am happy to be in a great organization that helps a player develop."

Englund is expected to move up to Djugarden's top squad next season.

"He's someone we feel that's going to play in our top-four down the road," Senators assistant GM Pierre Dorion said. "He's a defensive defenceman, he's hard, he's character, he matches up, he's huge, he plays big. He's just a guy that plays a North American type of game. We're just excited to have him and bring in a guy like that who's big, who skates, who brings all those attributes to the ice."

Gendron, who moved to New England at age five, possesses size and reads the ice well but is extremely raw relative to the typical third-rounder. He only moved to defence full-time this season, and also balanced hockey with playing baseball and football during his first few years attending Rivers. The plan is for him to spend his 18-year-old season with the BCHL's Penticton Vees, then join the Hockey East neophyte Connecticut Huskies.

"We had an injury so he [McEachern] asked if I could bring my puck-moving skills to defence," Gendron said. "At first I was nervous about [the move] that I might not get a chance to play college hockey. But I was living in the moment and our team needed help at the time. I found when I moved back there I got the puck more and actually got more chances.

"It's happened so fast and it's just surreal," he added.

Along with Gendron, Ottawa drafted two other NCAA-bound defencemen. At No. 100 overall, it took New Hampshire recruit Shane Eiserman from the USHL's Dubuque Fighting Saints. At 189, it took Clarkson University recruit Kelly Summers, who starred in the Ottawa-area Central Canada Hockey League and helped the Carleton Place Canadians reach the RBC Cup final.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.