How to Bet on Hockey

The National Hockey League may rank a distant fourth of the four major sports in the United States, but that hasn’t stopped sportsbooks from posting lines on the NHL.

1) The most important consideration is to know who is playing goalie for the two teams involved in any given contest, the reason being is due to the fact that a goalie is the single most important player on the ice and his performance will directly translate to the success of any given team on any given night. Keep up on starting line-ups and monitor the injury reports of each team playing on a particular day, often a situation will arise in which a back-up goalie gets the start.

2) Have a team by team schedule for the season on hand and realize in advance any and all scheduling situations that can and will impact any given teams performance, keep in mind that teams playing consecutive games have a tough row when facing rested home teams, quite often visiting teams do not arrive to the host city until early the next morning because they finished up a night game and then had to travel. In this scenario the visiting coach usually does not schedule a practice in order to keep the legs of his team fresh.

3) Hockey is similar to football in two key ways, first of all both games are very physical in nature, and secondly the adage that defense wins championships holds true in both sports. In hockey like football, there exists two type of teams, some teams play a style that is predicated on intimidating physical play featured by hard hitting while other teams play more of a finesse style of play predicated on timing, when two teams with these contrasting styles play usually the team with the more physical defense wins.

Betting the National Hockey League

Before a person can start to bet the NHL, it’s important they have a solid understanding of the MoneyLine. The money line is the most common method of betting the NHL although there is also a puck line, totals and “Grand Salami.” Nearly every sportsbook uses a 20-cent line on the National Hockey League. The 20-cents refers to the difference in the odds on the favorite and the odds on the underdog.

The Puck Line

While betting on the winner of the game, as shown above, is the most popular method of betting the NHL, there is also the puck line, which baseball bettors will recognize as being quite similar to the run line. When betting the puck line, bettors can either lay 1.5 goals with the favorite or take 1.5 goals with the underdog. The puck line used to be .5 goals, but the shootout eliminated the possibility of a tie game, so the oddsmakers bumped the puck line up to 1.5 goals.

Totals

Bettors also have the option of betting on the total number of goals scored in a game. The sportsbooks will post a number, generally between 5 and 6.5 and bettors can wager the number of goals scored in the game will be greater (over) than the posted number or less (under) than the posted number.

Grand Salami

The Grand Salami is practically an institution for hockey bettors. The Grand Salami allows hockey fans to have a rooting interest in every game being played on a particular day for the cost of one bet.

How the Grand Salami works is the sportsbooks will let bettors wager over or under the total number of goals scored in all of the games played on a particular day. If there are 10 games on a given day, the Grand Salami total will generally be around 53 to 60, depending on the particular games. Just as with regular totals, there will be times when bettors are risked to give higher odds on betting the over or the under.

There is one primary difference in betting hockey totals as opposed to betting basketball and football totals. Because scoring in hockey is so much lower than in football or basketball, the bookmakers are reluctant to change the number of a total and instead will often adjust the odds.

Over/under

In this situation, you are betting on the number of goals scored in a game. For example, if the lines are over / under 6, this means that you must predict if the game is going to total over 6 goals or under 6 goals. If there are EXACTLY 6 goals scored during a game, you get your bet back but of course, you would need to check with your sportsbook.

Straight Up
You are betting on the winner of the game.

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