SAN JOSE — A handful of NHL teams, including the Sharks, were interested in signing Brenden Dillon as he was playing his overage season with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League in 2011.

Dillon, who had gone undrafted, signed a three-year entry level contract with the Dallas Stars in March of that year.

So when Dillon was acquired by the Sharks from Dallas during the 2014-15 season for fellow blueliner Jason Demers, he and general manager Doug Wilson couldn’t help but share a laugh at the serendipity of it all.

“(Wilson) was kind of like, ‘Small world, we ended up getting you after all,’” Dillon said.

Six seasons later, Dillon, a pending unrestricted free agent, is about to become the Sharks’ franchise record holder for games played by an undrafted skater. Wednesday against the Vancouver Canucks, Dillon will play his 432nd game with the team, passing defenseman Dan Boyle, who played 431 of his 1,093 career games in San Jose from 2008-2014.

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“For me personally, yeah, I’m pretty proud of it,” Dillon said. “A lot of times, you’re counted out. You were the guy that wasn’t good enough or something was wrong with you, and you had a find a way to prove people wrong.

“For myself, to be able to watch Boyler play and watch how big of a piece he was in the organization and the league as a whole. I didn’t realize that I’ve been around that long here.”

It’s hard to imagine when you look at Dillon now — at 6-foot-4 and around 225 pounds and arguably the Sharks’ most physical defennseman — that he was just 5-foot-2 up until he was 14 or 15 years old. It’s a big reason why at that time, Dillon was passed over by every Western Hockey League team in 15 rounds of the bantam draft.

After a year in the Pacific Junior Hockey League, and undergoing a growth spurt, Dillon wound up getting his shot with Seattle, just a short drive away from his hometown of New Westminster, British Columbia. He played 280 games with the T-Birds, and was second on the team with 59 points in his final junior season.

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“Growing up Vancouver, there’s lot of good hockey players around there,” Dillon said. “In the summertime, our summer skates, it was like an all-star game with some of the guys you’d be out there with.

“But once you get the confidence and feel like, ‘Hey, I can skate with these guys. I can do what some of these guys are doing.’ That was the mentality for me. I couldn’t picture myself doing anything but playing hockey.”

He was 5-foot-11 by the time he was 17 and in his first WHL season. He grew five more inches by the time he left junior hockey.

After 123 games in the AHL from 2011-2013, Dillon, as of Wednesday morning, has now played 580 NHL games, Of the 70 defensemen who were drafted in 2009, only four — Victor Hedman, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Nick Leddy and Dmitri Kulikov — have so far played in more games than Dillon. All of those four players were taken in the first round.

In 51 games this season, Dillon has 12 points but is averaging just over 19 minutes of ice time per night, a jump from the 17:45 average he had last season. He’s improved his strength and conditioning, his skating, and whatever else he’s needed to do to remain in the NHL for the last seven-plus seasons.

“A few years back when I was the assistant coach here, Dilly was in that sixth (defenseman) kind of role,” interim coach Bob Boughner said, who was an assistant in San Jose from 2015-2017.

“He’s gotten his game to the point where he plays top four minutes now, he’s a consistent guy on our penalty kill where a few years ago he was spotted in and out. … Also, you notice off the ice. He’s just a more vocal guy and he’s not afraid to step up and say the right things in the dressing room. He feels more comfortable being in a leadership role.”

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Sharks reach agreement with depth centerman on two-year deal All of which potentially makes Dillon an attractive player for several teams to add as the Feb. 24 trade deadline approaches. Dillon is in the final season of a five-year contract he signed with the Sharks in 2015 and is slated to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.

With their place in the Western Conference, the Sharks will likely be sellers by the trade deadline. Still, Dillon hasn’t given up thinking the Sharks can rejoin the race.

“This summer, it’ll be a little different. I don’t know how these next couple months or couple weeks will play out,” Dillon said. “It’s been an awesome time being here as a Shark. With how we played (in Monday’s 4-2 win over Anaheim), you never know how these next couple weeks can go. I want to continue to make that push and see what happens.”