Michigan's goalie search is officially on, as the Ontario Reign, the AHL affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings, announced they've signed Portillo to an ATO contract.

An ATO stands for amateur tryout agreement, but in practice it means Portillo is going pro but agreed not to count this year towards his entry-level clock. He'll be getting his feet wet in the AHL over the remainder the season, and is almost certain to sign an entry-level deal when it's over. (I'll explain further below). Portillo was drafted in his 18-year-old season by Buffalo, who traded his rights last month to the Kings. LA will keep him on an entry-level contract through the 2025-'26 campaign.

Michigan will also lose a trio of seniors who provided some much-needed experience on the back end of this year's team. Gritty Nick Granowicz centered the checking line, and has a COVID season left to play. He scored 36 points in 101 games for Michigan in the last four years, but participated in senior night, and was expected to move on. Ciccolini might be a bigger surprise; the forechecking winger lost a big chunk of the middle of his Michigan career to injury—including the entire 2021-'22 season—but was a drafted player (7th rounder in 2019) and had a few streaks where he was able to convince us he was about to finally break out.

Blueliner Keaton Pehrson was also a senior, and a steady presence over four seasons when it seemed every other defenseman on the roster was getting injured just so Pehrson could stay on the top defensive pairing. Over the years #20 was often the other guy out there with Cam York, Owen Power, or Luke Hughes. His presence there couldn't by justified by a scoresheet, but Pehrson was the epitome of a guy who does his work off the puck. His final year was his best, with 11 assists, and four crucial blocks in the banner-clinching win at Minnesota in the Big Ten Tournament. He never did develop his on-the-puck game.

While the skaters are making room for youth, Michigan will definitely be a player in the goalie portal now, since backup (who came to be a backup) Noah West is also in the portal, and freshman Tyler Shea is an overager who only dressed for three games this year. Brown goalie Mathieu Caron seems like the one and only target for now; the rising junior put up a 2.49 GAA and 92.1 save percentage for a terrible ECAC team. No other goalie in the portal looks plausible, though you never know who else might pry loose.

Putting Portillo's Michigan career in context is difficult since we're still in the shadow of its nadir. Backing up Strauss Mann as a freshman, Portillo put up numbers equal to the elder star. As a blue-chip prospect, it was understood that the massive Portillo would inherit the job in 2021-'22, and Mann duly departed for a pro career. Michigan had virtually no drop-off, as Portillo was one of the best goalies in the country as a sophomore. He was expected to take another step forward as a junior, but it didn't work out that way. He made some incredible stops, had some great games, and enjoyed coming out of his net to play the puck even more than his fans hated when he did that. He also began making crude mistakes, taking awhile to get back up after going to the ice, losing his poise, losing his stick, and most egregiously losing the Frozen Four semifinal after giving up two bank shots and sharp-angle softy.

Part of the problem might have been that Portillo was working without a goalie coach—Steve Shields left the program after his complaints triggered the investigation that brought down Mel Pearson, and the volunteer assistant who replaced Shields took another opportunity in the middle of this season. It's hard not to see a correlation between the coaching situation and Portillo's fundamental breakdowns. It's also hard not to see the giant Swede developing into a fine NHL goalie in a few years.

Why does an amateur deal mean he's gone?

The current collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and its players union keeps entry-level salaries locked to prescribed maximums for their draft positions for (usually) three years. The clock doesn't start until they're out of college, but college hockey ends weeks before the NHL/AHL regular seasons, and sometimes players get signed and spend those last few weeks as professionals, burning through one of their entry-level years in the process. In general teams want to keep their draftees on entry-level contracts, and players want to get past that, so when you see a Matty Berniers jump to the NHL immediately it often means his team is willing to give up an entry-level year to entice him to come.

On the flipside, for a guy who isn't ready for the NHL however, the added franchise value of being on an entry-level contract can be a good thing, since the team that owns his rights can afford to be patient with his development, and might favor a cheap asset who's under team control. However if the player gets all the way through his senior year in college, the team that drafted him actually loses his rights. Portillo was a junior, but could have played one more season and become a free agent. This was the impetus for the team that drafted Portillo in the 3rd round, the Buffalo Sabres, to trade his rights to Los Angeles. At that point we figured Portillo was gone, because teams don't usually acquire those rights unless they're confident they will sign him and he'll forego his senior year.

Signing the ATO and joining Ontario means he intends to sign with LA next year, but also wants to play out the end of the AHL season without having it count as an entry-level season. Even though it literally says "amateur" in the title, signing an ATO is considered signing with a pro team by the NCAA's definition, so Portillo's collegiate eligibility is over.