NHL – National Hockey League
Betting on NHL
The National Hockey League was founded in 1917. after the National Hockey Association was dissolved in that same year. It started with four Canadian teams, with the Boston Bruins being added shortly after as the first American team in the history of the NHL. Since then, the league has added many teams, as there are now 32 teams occupying the league’s two conferences. Keep on reading to discover IBD’s offer on NHL Betting.
There are four divisions in the NHL today, with each conference having two divisions to break up the teams somewhat. In the Eastern Conference, there are the Atlantic and Metropolitan divisions, while the Western Conference is the home of the Central and Pacific divisions. Each division consists of eight teams each, giving the league 16 teams per conference to make 32 total teams.
Hockey Betting games consist of three periods of 20 minutes each. If a winner cannot be determined within that time frame, one overtime period is played during the regular season. If the game remains tied after that overtime period, a penalty shootout takes place after overtime, with each team looking to score as many times as possible on three penalty shots to set a mark that their opponent cannot match.
In the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the overtime rules are different, as there are no longer shootouts in the postseason. Instead, overtime periods are played in perpetuity until a team can score a game-winning goal and end the game. This has resulted in games going to multiple overtimes before, with games going as many as five or six overtimes in the past.
To make it to the aforementioned playoffs, teams look to finish in the top-eight in their conference standings. Teams are seeded one through eight in each conference, with each round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs consisting of seven-game series for each matchup. The first team to win four games moves on, with the other team getting eliminated, and the last team standing wins the Stanley Cup.
The Stanley Cup is one of the most sought-after trophies in all of sports, with its iconic design making it beloved by hockey fans and non-hockey fans alike. The Cup has a massive base, with a big, wide-open cup at the top of it. And with every member of the championship team getting to keep the Cup for some time in the offseason after winning the championship, there is a motivation for every player to help win the Cup.
NHL Picks
There are plenty of NHL picks to choose from each day, with the most common type of bets coming from single games in the National Hockey League. The most popular type of bets are Moneyline bets, where bettors pick who is going to win a game, and over/under bets where bettors guess how many goals are scored in each game. Puckline bets are also popular, where bettors wager on the hockey equivalent of a point spread.
The other popular type of single-game bet in hockey is the prop bet, where bettors can wager on really intricate markets about how a game is going to go. Props can be centered around individual player performances, such as how many saves a goalie will have or whether or not a player will score a goal in a game. They can also pertain to the flow of the game itself, such as markets on when the first goal will be scored or whether a game will go over time.
Outside of single-game bets, there are plenty of futures wagers available to be made before and during each NHL season. These bets allow bettors to predict what the outcome of a full season will be, such as which team will end the season lifting the Stanley Cup. But bettors can wager on smaller milestones than that, such as which team will win each division or conference, and over/under bets on how many points a team will amass over a full season.
Bettors can also wager on futures concentrating on individual awards. Sportsbooks often offer odds on who will win the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player or the Rocket Richard trophy as the league’s goal-scoring leader. Bettors who can look at the entire league and make unbiased decisions on these markets often have a chance to make handsome profits on these futures markets.
NHL Odds
NHL Betting odds are available at all sportsbooks, with the league being one of the most popular to bet on in America. Alongside the general odds, many bettors specifically seek out NHL Vegas odds, which are often viewed as a benchmark in the industry. However, it’s crucial to remember that not all odds are consistent across sportsbooks. Some sites might offer more favorable odds in certain markets than others. While over/under markets tend to have similar odds from one site to the next, areas like Moneylines and futures bets can see significant variations.
For instance, a hockey team might be a -120 favorite to win an upcoming NHL game at one sportsbook. Yet, when you check the NHL Vegas odds, that same team might be at even odds. This discrepancy means a bettor would need to wager $120 to win $100 on that team at one site and only $100 to get the same return at another, even though the game itself hasn’t changed.
These small but essential differences in betting odds can be found across most sportsbooks ahead of numerous hockey games. The key for bettors is to keep an eye on multiple bookmakers, including those offering NHL Vegas odds, and consider maintaining accounts at different sportsbooks. This approach allows them to always place their bets at the most favorable odds, potentially saving or earning more money.
The specific sportsbooks a bettor can use largely hinge on the sports betting laws of their state. But regardless of the sportsbooks available, it’s wise for bettors to always scout for the best prices. Sticking to just one source could mean missing out on better odds and, consequently, money in the long run.
NHL Betting Stats
Hockey is an interesting sport to bet on from a statistical perspective, as there are plenty of stats to reference for bettors who know the game well enough to understand them. Statistics are not a definitive solution to predicting the outcome of hockey games. But bettors who can effectively utilize statistics to help decide which NHL bets to make are often in a better position than those who are unable to do so.
Goaltending statistics are extremely valuable when deciding which teams to bet on or against in the NHL. Metrics like save percentages and goals-against average help bettors understand how frequently goalies are saving shots and how often they are letting shots in relative to the save chances that they get. But there are other ways to effectively gauge the performances of goalies that bettors should think about as well.
For example, goalies can be tracked to see where they are getting beat on shots that are going in. Information like that can help bettors determine if specific opponents or players are threats to score goals to those vulnerable areas in upcoming games, or if an upcoming opponent or player can’t exploit those weaknesses. The same can be done to handicap attacking players, as bettors can use advanced metrics to see how their strengths and weaknesses align with opposing defenses.
Penalty-related statistics are also important to keep track of when betting on hockey, as teams can have more or fewer players on the ice than their opponents depending on the situation. It is important to compare which teams are more penalized than others, to determine whether teams are likely to be on the power play or penalty kill more often than their opponents. And it is important to evaluate power play and penalty kill efficiency to figure out who to back in each situation.
NHL Betting Trends
Betting trends are very popular in the NHL and other sports, as bettors are often inundated with these pieces of information by people looking to justify their betting selections. But the effectiveness of trends is often debated, as they require a lot of context and some work to determine just how meaningful they are. If nothing else, there are some things to think about when seeing or hearing NHL betting trends.
For example, Sports Bettors might see a sports betting trend that says a team has covered the puck line in 10 straight games, which makes it sound like that team is likely to do it again in game number 11. But without any context behind that trend, there is no way to determine if that team has an edge going into their next game to make that trend useful. Maybe that team played a few backup goalies in a row during that stretch or had good luck with empty-net goals to help them cover.
Regardless of what the trend is being looked at, bettors have to dig deeper to find out why a team has had success or lacked success over that specified period. There is often more than meets the eye with betting trends, and figuring out what exactly those factors are can be more useful than blindly regurgitating trends. This is one of the many bits of research that bettors have to do when deciding which direction to go with their bets.
Of course, if a bettor does vet a trend and doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary that artificially boosted a team during that period, then they might have something worth using. Not all trends should be discarded, but they should all be researched with a healthy dose of skepticism to determine whether or not they are worth paying attention to.
How to Bet on Hockey
To bet on the NHL, sports bettors should aim to make their projections about the results of each NHL game. Developing score projections and power rankings is important to the success of NHL bettors, as doing so can reveal differences between those projections and the actual betting lines set by bookmakers. Bettors can then evaluate those differences and determine if they are missing something from their projections, or if there is value in that betting market justifying a wager.
Also important when betting on the NHL is the need to expect variance to factor heavily into the equation in positive and negative ways at times. Hockey can be unpredictable, as both teams are on ice and playing a sport where the slightest deflection of the puck can flip a game completely on its head. Because of that, bettors have to take their emotions out of the equation, as good and bad runs are inevitable given the high-variance nature of pro hockey.
To eliminate the impacts of that variance in hockey, bettors should try and bet the same amount on every hockey game that they bet on. This will turn winning at hockey betting into a long-term proposition, taking the variance out of the equation in a sport where it could otherwise be a tricky factor in the short term.
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NHL betting is legal in some states, as different states have different laws pertaining to sports betting. Many states do have legal sports betting, though, which includes wagering on the National Hockey League.
Bettors can wager on the NHL legally at sportsbooks that are permitted in their respective states. Again, not every state offers the same sportsbooks, as their availability depends on each state’s laws.
The best NHL betting site is completely in the eye of the beholder, as different bettors have different priorities. Some bettors may care more about a site’s odds or the availability of specific betting markets more than other criteria.
Puckline betting is the equivalent of point spread betting for hockey. Favorites have a goal and a half taken off of their final score in most cases, while underdogs have a goal and a half added to their score in many instances.
The over/under in hockey betting is a market where sportsbooks project a number of goals they expect to be scored in a game. Bettors can then wager on whether they think a game will see more or fewer goals than that amount.
Moneyline betting is the act of placing a bet on who is going to win a given game in the NHL. This market can include overtime or only include regulation depending on the site.
The key to winning at hockey betting is bankroll management. Variance is a huge part of betting on this particular sport, and betting a consistent amount on each game can help eliminate the short-term hiccups this sport can generate.
Yes, live betting on the NHL is an option at nearly all sportsbooks. These sites will offer odds that are updated throughout the course of each game, with those updates being reflective of what has happened in the game to that point.
The NHL season typically goes from October to April, with the postseason going into the month of June.