With the recent signing of defenseman Jordan Spence, Kings GM Rob Blake essentially has two items remaining on his summer to list — inking prospect Erik Portillo to a new deal and solving the riddle that Arthur Kaliyev has evolved into.
We’ll have more on the latter in a subsequent article. For now, let’s focus on LA’s promising young goaltender.
To quickly reset, Portillo joined the organization via a trade with Buffalo in March 2023. While the initial deal technically was for his rights, it wasn’t long before the 6-foot-6 netminder put pen to paper on his first pro contract.
While it was still an Entry Level Contract (ELC), it wasn’t the usual three-year variety that is commonly signed by players coming out of the junior ranks. In fact, when it comes to players and teams working out the details of an ELC, there isn’t really much to negotiate. The length of the deal is largely driven by the age of the player. Additionally, the base pay is capped at a certain number set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NHL and NHLPA, leaving only really bonuses to be discussed. And even those are already laid out. It’s more like a menu at a restaurant, where both sides sort of check off what they want, but the prices are already set.
In the case of Portillo, he signed a two-year deal that basically amounted to a one-year contract (for the 2023-24 season), as he was able to ‘burn’ that first year off by reporting to the Ontario Reign after his season ended at the University of Michigan. He never even played an NHL or AHL game during the 2022-23 season, yet it still counted toward a year of service on his contract.
That brings us to current.
A native of Sweden, Portillo is currently a Restricted Free Agent (RFA). The Kings qualified him back in June, so he has a one-year contract offer already on the table.
He’s coming off a rookie season that saw his workload increase as the 2023-24 campaign wore along. While Ontario used four different players in net, Portillo led the team with 39 regular season starts, along with all eight playoff games. His 24 wins were second best in the AHL among all first-year goalies, while his .918 save percentage was fourth best (and sixth best when looking at all goalies, regardless of experience level).
Prediction Time
A two-year is most likely. It’s possible the new contract could stretch to three years; something we’d put at around a 35% chance of happening.
The first year of the deal will most likely be a two-way contract, meaning he’ll earn one amount of money if in the NHL, and a lesser amount in the AHL (perhaps around $250k). Year two of Portillo’s new contract is expected to be a one-way contract, meaning he would be paid the same amount of money if in the AHL of NHL. It’s sort of a moot point, though, as projections call for him to at least be the Kings backup netminder for the 2025-26 season.
One interesting note about this situation centers on Portillo’s waiver status. Most of the time, when a player is coming off their ELC, they then require waivers to be sent back to the AHL — i.e. that will be the case with Alex Turcotte this coming season. However, the rules are slightly different with goaltenders, leaving Portillo as waiver exempt for three more seasons — meaning he won’t need to pass through waivers at any point this coming season (or for two more years after that) to be recalled to the NHL. Even so, if he was to get time with the Kings in 2024-25, it would most likely indicate something went terribly wrong with LA’s plans of using Darcy Kuemper and David Rittich as their primary goalies, along with Pheonix Copley as a third option.
What about the money?
As we did with our previous contract predictions for Quinton Byfield and Jordan Spence, we’ll begin by looking at a few potential comparable situations around the NHL.
Flames netminder Dustin Wolf is perhaps the best contract to look at in this exercise.
Calgary recently signed their similarly aged 23-year old prospect to a two-year contract extension with an AAV of $850K. His AHL numbers were in the same wheelhouse as Portillo last season, posting 20 wins and carrying a .922 SV%.
New Jersey inked Nico Dawes to a two-year deal at $812K AAV, while Columbus agreed to almost identical deal with Jet Greaves.
Circling back to LA, one of the things Blake has done a rather masterful job of in recent years is signing prospects coming off their ELCs to new deals that have just enough money or term on them to keep other teams away from those players when/if they hit the waiver wire. Again, no such poison pill is really needed here, as Portillo is waiver exempt for three more seasons. That’s also why adding a third year to this new extension probably isn’t preferred by the player. Even if the team would welcome more cost control, it’s likely more advantageous for the player to take the shorter-term deal and look for a significant increase in pay after two years.
Thus, we’ll predict Portillo and the Kings ultimately agree on a two-year deal at closer to $1M on the AAV, with perhaps an AHL dollar figure that’s closer to $350K in year one.
When all is said and done, Portillo is expected to anchor the Kings goaltending responsibilities at the 2024 Rookie Faceoff event — which will be hosted by LA next month, with more information available at the link below.
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