Ice Hockey betting

Ice Hockey is a frantic game, and betting on it can be just as exciting. Bafflingly, while a wealth of information and statistics are readily available, the sport simply does not have a tradition of punting as football betting or horse racing have. However, we firmly believe that both punters and hockey fans worldwide are missing out. Hockey has just as many markets as other sports of such popularity, which leaves plenty of room to find value.

Line Matchups

Ice hockey is fairly unique by how the rosters work. Different groups of players, or lines, are sent together onto the ice, and a player is a member of a line for the entire match. Any serious hockey fan knows just how important this is when it comes to strategy, but it is also important to recognize how important it is for betting.

If you want to make successfull ice hockey predictions how a team is going to perform, you need to understand how these different lines work together. You also need to figure out how they will match up against the opposition and their tactics. Sadly, there is no simple guide to grasping line usage. After all, coaches are paid handsomely for this purpose. You need to watch hockey, try to analyze strategies, and try to apply this knowledge when making your next wager.

Properly Apply Statistics

Stats on their own can be misleading when it comes to ice hockey online betting.  People usually like to point to Goals per Game as the most important statistic. However, let’s look at an example. In the NHL, the top-scoring team last season were the Pittsburgh Penguins with an average of 3.38 goals per game. The lowest-scoring team, on the other hand, were the Florida Panthers with just over 2.27. If you were to place your bet solely on this stat, Pittsburgh would be considered the clear favourites. However, that’s a difference of only one goal. And that’s the biggest average score difference in the entire league. One goal is not unsurmountable, so if you were to bet solely on this stat – you would be getting terrible value.

Again, game knowledge trumps statistics, no matter how much professional punters like to stress their importance. Of course, there is a big difference between game knowledge and “feeling” or “intuition”, which are common pitfalls for bettors.

Puck Line Handicap

While the term ‘puck line’ is pretty much unique to NHL handicap betting, it is used much like the traditional spreads or ice hockey handicap betting.  However, punters have been crunching the numbers on some of these betting offers, and the math comes up in favour of Puck Line betting offers. An average puck line of +1,5 provides incredible value in terms of the ratio of betting odds to actual probability.  As such, if you’re after value bets, we strongly recommend making liberal use of puck line handicap.