Having troubles of choosing the best NHL betting sites to place your bet on world’s most popular ice hockey league? Don’t panic, we’re here for you.
If you are looking forward to the next barnburner or placing a bet on your team winning Stanley Cup, our NHL betting guide is packed with everything you need including where to find the best NHL odds and tips that can help you make money from the league.
Because almost all the internet gambling establishments accept NHL wagers, it is really difficult to choose where to join and bet.
We have been fortunate to review hundreds of sports betting websites from our inception in 2011. We also understand what ice hockey fanatics need when it comes to online betting and we have already done all the dirty work for you. Before granting our seal of approval, we consider a number of aspects including licensing, banking options, mobile support and customer service amongst others.
The greatest NHL gambling sites have even contests to lure prospective customers and reward their current ones. Opening a wagering account will allow you to get free stakes and deposit bonuses, while others will give you improved odds and reload bonuses to keep enticing you back for more.
Just as Connor Hellebuyck and Jacob Markström protect their goals, we hope you safeguard your money. These top NHL betting sites are very secure and have facilities such as data encryption and two-factor authentication (2FA) to ensure customer safety. There is also a guarantee on licensed websites with good names.
With NHL broadcast partners, you can follow all games from the rink on TV live. Many sites that specialize in NHL betting also have a live streaming option. As a result, every shot, goal or save will be available for you to watch either from your desktop computer, tablet or smartphone and in high definition. You won’t miss even a second of the game;
The National Hockey League (NHL) was created in 1917, and is globally known for its top-notch ice hockey players. In the United States and Canada, it is considered one of the “Big Four” professional sports leagues alongside National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Football League (NFL).
The National Hockey League had only three teams competing in the first two seasons of its existence, but it has since expanded multiple times and currently has 32 teams consisting of 25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. In 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights became the NHL’s 31st franchise whereas Seattle Kraken became the league’s official thirty-second franchise in 2021.
The regular season for NHL teams begins in early October and lasts until early or mid-April and each team plays 82 games.
The schedule of 1,312 regular season games will give you many chances to bet on ice hockey. The number does not include NHL preseason games or Stanley Cup playoffs wagering.
The NHL teams are divided into two conferences namely, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. Each conference is in turn divided into two divisions each containing eight teams. For instance, there are two divisions in each of the conferences; Atlantic Division and Metropolitan Division for East Conference or Central Division and Pacific Division for West Conference.
The 2021-22 NHL season brings together the following thirty-two teams:
| Atlantic Division | Metropolitan Division | Central Division | Pacific Division |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boston Bruins | Carolina Hurricanes | Arizona Coyotes | Anaheim Ducks |
| Buffalo Sabres | Columbus Blue Jackets | Chicago Blackhawks | Calgary Flames |
| Detroit Red Wings | New Jersey Devils | Colorado Avalanche | Edmonton Oilers |
| Florida Panthers | New York Islanders | Dallas Stars | Los Angeles Kings |
| Montreal Canadiens | New York Rangers | Minnesota Wild | San Jose Sharks |
| Ottawa Senators | Philadelphia Flyers | Nashville Predators | Seattle Kraken |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | Pittsburgh Penguins | St. Louis Blues | Vancouver Canucks |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | Washington Capitals | Winnipeg Jets | Vegas Golden Knights |
With your knowledge of the NHL format and all 32 teams vying for the Stanley Cup, now is the time to make a wager on your favorite side.
If you are new to online NHL betting, do not be afraid. We have helped many hockey enthusiasts open their accounts with SBO.net, so that they can enjoy the exciting NHL games by placing wagers on them.
You can bet on the NHL online using this step-by-step guide.
The first step is to open a betting account. On this page, you will find the best NHL betting sites that you can compare and choose from by clicking the ‘visit site’ button. After that, click on ‘register’ where you then provide names and email address to complete registration.
It is now time for you to deposit money into your account. Access the banking section in order to see a list of deposit options that are supported. Choose your favorite option, key in your payment details and indicate how much you want to deposit. You should be able to find some funds within seconds.
Next, go to the ice hockey betting part. A good online sportsbook will have convenient links and create an A-Z list of sports. After finding the ice hockey section click ‘NHL’ to get fixtures that are about to be played. In order to see the latest odds for a single game, one should click on one of the games.
Press odds and get a pick on betting. After that, key in your bet amount and confirm to make your stake. Now is the time to kick back up your heels as you catch all the action on the rink.
Take note that there are two main methods by which a person can bet on which team will win an NHL game.
Most online bookmakers offer both of the options mentioned above. Nevertheless, this is not always the case in some catering to specific markets.
In the land of ice hockey, Canada, it has always been the case that Canadian NHL bettors only have to gamble on who will win during 60 minutes play. In America, full game betting is more common. It was in this way that Las Vegas sportsbooks commenced offering it. If you don’t see draw among the betting options or words like “draw no bet” implying regulation time only, then it is clear that the site offers full game betting only.
One such UK/European betting option, which is referred to as the Draw No Bet, has to be approached with great precaution. The United Kingdom and Europe have an interesting betting market known as the Draw No Bet, which needs extreme care.
The latter case is not common in most gaming sites, but that doesn’t mean it is non-existent. As such, you will gamble only on the winning team across two options. It is only during the regular gaming time for instance ninety minutes that this happens.
When the game ends in a draw after the normal time, then that becomes a push (wagers are given back).
It is, therefore, important to mention the various ways in which bets can be placed on NHL game winner in greater details as this is important when shopping for odds. The odds for teams to win in regulation (where they lose if it is a draw) may look tempting if one took them for full game odds. Don’t be trapped into this.
The NHL has a lot of markets that can be bet on; one of them is predicting the winner of a game. Other common betting options are:
This is a type of betting which involves a handicap also known as point spread.
If team is -1.5 it means they should win by more than two goals so that the bet will be successful. If a team is +1.5 then they have 1.5 goals added to their score. It can be considered as winning for betting on purposes if they win the game or lose by one goal only, thus they are the winners in this case.
Usually, most of the time the odds are very high for teams playing with a negative puck line while that is not the case for teams with a positive puck line.
This is a bet on whether the total number of goals in a game will exceed or fall short of the stated total. The total goal set by the bookmaker is 5.5, where you can either predict it will be less than 5.5 goals or more than 5.5 goals.
This is usually approximately an even money wagering proposition but not always.
This is similar to overall betting though it’s done with regards to a particular team.
For example, a good NHL betting website can place the Chicago Blackhawks’ total at 3.5. Then, you have two choices: under for less than four goals or over for at least four goals.
This is a thrilling bet that will keep you at the edge of your seat every time the team strikes.
This is a bet on the final score that is exact. For instance, if you wager on a team to win by three goals to one, you can get odds such as +1300.
Sadly, most US-based bookies do not have NHL correct score betting. Nonetheless, if you carefully study the statistics and try to foretell what will occur, this may become a profitable gamble.
In one period, this wager is similar to the moneyline.
You could place a bet, such as Montreal winning the third period against Toronto’s Maple Leads at -200.
The number of goals that either team has when the third period starts is irrelevant; all that matters is if the Canadians score more goals than the Maple Leafs in the final 20 minutes.
These are similar to goal line bets and are sometimes known as NHL odds, but the number added or subtracted isn’t always 1.5.
As an example, you can bet on Detroit Red Wings to win against Ottawa Senators with a -2.5 goal handicap. This implies that if the Red Wings do not win by three or more goals, you lose money placed as a bet on them. If they lose by one or two goals or they win, then you also lose the bet.
Just as its name implies, a futures bet is a form of gambling that revolves around events that will happen later on in the future. NHL futures are one of the thrilling ways of following your favourite team throughout the whole season.
Bleacher is an example of futures bet in which gambling starts at the beginning of the season that Montreal Canadiens will win Eastern Conference or Detroit Red Wings will win Stanley Cup which is a prestigious award.
Do you feel like you can predict the winner of Atlantic Division or Metropolitan Division in Eastern Conference? Or are you interested in guessing who will win Central Division or Pacific Division in Western Conference? Do not worry because with top NHL betting sites, you can bet on such futures.
The Eastern Conference winners receive the Prince of Wales Trophy, whereas the Western Conference winners earn the Clarence S Campbell Bowl. Then, the winning teams go on to compete for the Stanley Cup which is North America’s oldest professional sports award.
At the start of every season, all 32 NHL teams have a dream to end it by lifting the Stanley Cup. In each conference, eight top teams qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs comprising three topmost teams in each division and two other conference teams with most points. Competing against one another in a series of best-of-seven matches, two teams play to win, and they move up to the next stage; this is an elimination tournament that starts in April and ends just before June kicks off.
Each of the two champions in the conference makes a way to the Stanley Cup Finals. The team with most points in regular season has home-ice advantage while in previous rounds higher ranked team is given home ice advantage, leading to NHL betting lines. This means that four of the seven games in this series are played at their home rink which always influences the NHL betting lines.
Because you now know the rules and regulations of NHL gambling, it is high time that we gave you some hints for making money from betting on the most famous ice hockey league across the universe.
Teams such as the Montreal Canadiens and the Chicago Blackhawks are famous for long spells of victories at home. Bell Centre and United Center are considered fortresses, this usually means that opposing teams often lack the confidence to win.
Certainly, a few groups have difficulties regardless of whether they are playing at home or outside. The Buffalo Sabres tied the 18-game losing streak in NHL history that had been set by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2003-2004 season.
The 32 NHL teams are divided into four divisions in two conferences, which is why, due to the size of the US and Canada, it often takes teams up to thousands of miles to travel. It has a significant effect on practice time and endurance.
The Boston Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup Finals clash against the Vancouver Canucks holds the record of longest distance between two cities in Stanley cup finals history with 2,504 miles separating the rivals.
Given the fact that ice hockey is an aggressive and high speed game, players often get injured through lacerations, sprains, contusions and fractures. The busy NHL timetable additionally makes players susceptible to injuries associated with overuse.
Going through different NHL teams’ injury reports can be beneficial to those who want to place bets. It will not take you long and you might observe that a team’s principal goalkeeper will be on the bench for about a month, hence placing a bet on the team leaking more goals than usual will pay off.
Irrespective of whether you’re placing a wager in relation to regulation time only or full game involving OT/shootout, your bet will have corresponding odds. Certain websites display these in decimal odds format while others use American odds format.
With many books one can change the settings to give display of odds in different formats. If you are new to betting, click on any of these articles for a clear view on how betting odds work.
It is important to grasp that the NHL is essentially a betting market before delving into any NHL betting strategy.
It is hindered by advanced statistics which involve, among others, goals for and against, goal difference, power play efficiency, penalty kill percent, shot percentage, save percentage, winning streaks, conference placement position in possession fenwick close percentage PDO 5 on 5 goal differential.
To handicap, the data needed is readily available online. It is also abundant.
The National Hockey League (NHL) regular season features 32 teams playing 82 times each resulting in 1,312 games.
16 teams qualify for the playoffs in a best-of-seven elimination tourney with no byes, adding 60-98 playoff games to determine the eventual winner of the Stanley Cup. 16 teams enter into a playoff that is an elimination tournament of seven-games series without any bye’s and this contributes to 60 to 98 playoff games necessary to identify the eventual victor of Stanley cup.
Even beginners can gain from this without necessarily being aware of the many predictive models available. This is because certain bookmakers are too easy on themselves when it comes to their NHL handicapping and risk management, they make their odds based on a dimeline. Thus teams that are as equal as possible have odds home -105 / away -105 (American format), 1.9524/1.9524(decimal format).
If any gambler who is not that serious about it and only bets for their favorite team using a dimeline, they will expect to incur losses of 2.38% of their aggregate stakes on the average. However if the same bet were place on a nickel line the percentage will drop to 1.22%. This is from just one gambling website alone. By using different sites and being an aggressive odds shopper, it’s possible to wager at less than one percent theoretical house advantage! Handicapping can reduce that to fractions of a percentage point.
Also, you may use multiple online betting sites and bet at whichever has the most favorable odds; that will give you a very low theoretical house advantage. Any player can get lucky unlike in most casino games because NHL betting done properly is simply a much better offer. This happens often in casinos not just sometimes on average. You have better chances here- but it is essential to utilize different sites for comparing odds.
To go the extra mile, it is possible to predict scores through wagering markets. Using sites that have NHL bets at the lowest margins is important in order to do this.
To predict the scores using market-based data, the oddsportal.com NHL feed should be utilized. Register for an account and log-in as this will give you access to the maximum number of bookmakers.
Full game (home/away tab), puck lines (AH tab), and totals (over/under tab) are where these odds can be found on various tabs of many betting sites. You will find the odds at one of the best NHL betting site, then compare them to those at oddsportal so that you don’t miss any value.
This allows one to calculate odds for virtually anything based on a distribution model by predicting an exact score.
In a Microsoft Excel sheet, the easiest ‘mostly acceptable’ way of doing it is using Poisson. We use this formula =POISSON(x,mean,cumulative). The three people with no name at all are variables. X is what we’re solving for, mean is given, and cumulative is true if we want to know the odds of at least that number and false if we want to know that number exact.
To determine the probability of Ducks scoring exactly 2 goals if they are expected to score 2.895 goals, we insert =POISSON(2, 2.895, FALSE) into any cell in Microsoft Excel, click tab and view the filling of the cell with 0.231731256.
It is a 23.17% chance they’ll score exactly two goals, if you like. If I want to know if they’ll score 2 or more we change this to =POISSON(2, 2.895, TRUE) and see they will score 2 or more 44.71% of the time.
This data enables one to chart all possible grades (as shown in our football/soccer example here). In order to give a 4-2 lead for the ducks, you can simply subtract four from ten and two from five. By representing the percentages as decimals and then multiplying them, you will find that the probability of a score of 4-2 is obtained.
If you know how to use implied probability, then look for any betting website where 4-2 is written as its odds. Check out the ratios in which the calculated Poisson probabilities are less than their respective Implied ones.
Additionally, after you have computed all the right scores using Poisson you will be able to place them in a graph for valuing virtually anything.
To cap the Ducks -1.5 on a puckline, take all the probabilities of every possible correct score that has them winning by 2 or more and add them together. If you want to know if both teams will score then sum up all the probabilities where teams score at least one goal.
What was mentioned in the previous section was just a beginner’s guide. To take it further, first comprehend that Poisson does not work exactly. Not all scoring in ice hockey is random because the pace of the game changes depending on score. There is also an issue of pulling goalies at the end of games resulting to 5 on 6 scoring and empty net goals. Successful NHL bettors incorporate covariance into their analysis employing bivariate Poisson distribution.
An advanced technique for predicting scores without depending on estimations from the betting market is getting highly developed. It involves predictive modeling that needs knowledge in applied statistics, historical data availability, software and basic programming skills. For those who are green, one would be advised to take notice of the fact that free online courses are being offered throughout the year by such major universities as Duke, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton.
By now, you have all the skills and knowledge to make an informed decision in NHL gambling; therefore, join our number one betting platform and start predicting the outcome of various games.
The best NHL sports betting sites are provided on this page. Once you have opened a betting account, you can access and place bets on anything from the outcome of games to the number of goals that will be scored among others at ease.
Of course! The best NHL sportBetByGeooks offers welcome bonuses and free bets to new customers. You might get a free bet if you sign up, while others may refund your first bet if it loses. And all sites will match the initial cash deposit, giving you more money to place bets on NHL matches.
Absolutely! The leading NHL betting sites have a user-friendly mobile app with an uncomplicated menu and quick bet slip entry. Hockey gambling applications are based on HTML5, which implies that they can work on Android, iOS and other operating systems of mobile devices. You will never miss another golden chance for making a profitable wager anymore.
A.NHL in-game gambling is betting on a game that is already ongoing. Momentum shifts so quickly as the odds do, you can benefit from this by keeping your fingers prepared. Live betting markets on NHL include who will win, final score or what the outcome of the next goal will be.
