Betting on Regular Season NHL Games

The National Hockey League, or NHL, is really exciting to watch and also presents some great wagering opportunities. Since it’s not as saturated as NBA and NFL markets, it’s easier to find value bets, capitalise on competitive odds, and take your time to build a winning strategy.

When you’re deciding who to back as a beginner, there are a few basic factors to check before adding advanced statistics and metrics to your strategy as your skills develop. For your convenience and edification, we’ve explained these factors below.

Check Previous Face-Offs

There are no less than 82 games in a regular NHL season, so the teams facing off in the game that you are betting on have almost certainly recently gone up against each other. Check these recent matchups to get an idea of how you expect each side to perform.

Check Injury Reports

In the NFL’s regular season there are only 16 games, so even if a player is injured for a single game the overall season results are affected and injury reports are taken very seriously. With so many regular-season NHL games, by comparison, it’s easy to assume that injuries are not as impactful in the Hockey League as they are in Football.

However, such an assumption would be wrong. In Hockey, more so than in Football or Baseball, every teammate is important to their collective success. In other words, it’s not only the star athletes’ injuries who you need to pay attention to. Make sure you look at how many players have been hurt, so you get an idea of how the squad will be performing as a whole.

Check Goals For vs Goals Against

The overall record of any team in any sport, even one as great as the St Louis Blues, can be a little deceiving. For a more accurate indication of their capabilities, you’re better of checking the goals for vs goals against metrics. This shows you whether teams are winning by high margins, or if they’re sneaking in their victories by a single goal, and can affect how much risk you’re willing to accept in your moneyline bets when placing bets at betting sites in Australia.

Check Puck Lines

In Hockey, Puck Lines are similar to Point Spread bets. The spread is usually fixed at -1.5 and +1.5 goals, and moneyline odds are still attached to it. That means that, if you bet on the clear favourite to win by more than 2 goals, you’re likely to walk away with a tidy payout.

Check Goalie Play

While NHL goalies might look like unstoppable machines on the ice, they’re also human. You expect to see Baseball players hitting winning streaks on some days and batting out on others, so why wouldn’t Hockey goalies have good and bad streaks? Energy levels, confidence swings, life events and other issues can all affect goalie play.

Bottom line? Find out how these important players are doing, and how their performances compare over their last 5 games. You shouldn’t back the team with the more successful goalie without question, but it is an important indicator.