The NHL has always been one of the most popular sports to wager on in Canada and many Americans also enjoy wagering on the game. Before the internet thousands of people would play proline every single night, but when the internet came along that all changed. With online sportsbooks winning money on the NHL is so much easier because you only need to wager on one game if you would like. In proline you aren’t allowed to wager on only one game and that makes it more difficult to win.
There are lots of different types of bets that you can make on the NHL within most online sportsbooks and it’s recommended you learn about each one of them. We’re going to briefly take a look at the common NHL bets that you will generally make as a bettor.
A straight wager is when you simply pick one of the teams to win. Since there are no ties anymore in the NHL you don’t need to worry about that happening. In 99% of the games in the NHL there will be a clear favourite which the odds will reflect although you’ll also rarely see some games with the same odds.
You can bet on the goal-line in the NHL which is where you need to bet on a team to win the game by 2 goals or a team not to lose the game by two goals. The spread is always -1.5 in goal-line wagers so you don’t need to worry about a tie. You’ll often have excellent odds when betting on a team to win by 2 goals and not so great odds when taking the underdog not to lose by 2 goals.
You can also do some NHL Betting on the over/under of the games in the NHL and you can also bet on team totals for every game. The sportsbook will post a total such as -5.5 for instance, and you need to decide whether the goal total in the game between both teams combined with be over or under that total. In this example if the game has 6 goals or more then the over wins and if the game has 5 goals or less the under wins.
If you want to bet on a group of teams on one ticket then this is called a “parlay” online and you can pick 2+ teams on the same ticket. The payouts can become really big with parlays so they are worth the risk when you’re betting. A $5 parlay on a 5-6 gamer will often pay a couple hundred bucks, so as you can see it’s worth the $5.
Most players only sportsbook guys allow for people to bet on all sorts on props during NHL games which include such bets as who will win the 1st period, 2nd period, 3rd period, who will score first and many other types of bets. Prop bets can be difficult to win and you’re going to be relying a lot on luck so I would stick to the more traditional bets.