Betting the NHL

Although not as popular as the other professional leagues, the NHL is a viable option for bettors looking to increase their winnings. NHL teams play 82 regular-season games, and due to the inherent physicality in hockey it is unrealistic to expect each player to give 100% every game. However, winning every game is not as important as it is in, say, the NFL, which only has 16 regular-season games. In the NFL, a five-game losing streak is likely to ruin the rest of the season for a team, whereas a five-game skid for an NHL team wouldn’t be as detrimental due to the amount of games played.

That said, the NHL bettor may never really know when a team will be playing with everything it has. Thus choosing the winner of a game can become quite challenging. To remove some of the headache out of making the correct choice, a basic NHL betting system is outlined below.

With this system, the bettor should look for situations where a decent team with a high home winning percentage is on a three-or four-game home skid. Good hockey teams are usually the teams that have an overall winning percentage and a home winning percentage above 57%. As a general rule of thumb, good teams usually play well at home or on the road, but those same teams play even better when surrounded by their home crowd. With this in mind, it’s unlikely that a good team will lose three or four home games in a row, giving the bettor an opportunity to take advantage of one that will be looking to redeem itself before the home crowd. Additionally, the better should ensure that the home team has won at least 50% of its last 10 games. This allows the bettor to eliminate teams that may be experiencing a minor slump.

The crucial component of this system is to find good teams that have lost their past few home games but are currently playing well. The idea is to match good home teams with bad road teams — ideally with the visitor having both an overall and road winning percentage below 50%.

When using this system, the bettor is relying on the circumstance that the home team will win at least one game in a multiple-game homestand. If the home team loses Game 1 of the homestand, the bettor must double the wager on Game 2. If the home team loses Game 2, then the bettor must take the losses from both Games 1 and 2 and double the wager on Game 3 (this also applies to playoff series). If the home team wins a game, the betting stops and the system is restarted in a separate qualifying series/homestand. As with all sports gambling, there are no certainties. The bettor should ensure that his/her bankroll has the capacity to endure a situation where the home team loses all three games of the series/homestand. However, this can generally be avoided if the correct team match-ups are chosen.

There are a few exceptions that must be noted within this system. First, if the home team has a lot of injured players or if the team appears to be going through a slump, then this is a team the bettor may want to avoid until the team has improved its position. This system works best when used beginning in November and continuing through March. By starting in November instead of October, when the NHL season starts, the good teams have a chance to establish themselves. By ending in March the bettor can avoid teams that have already clinched a spot in the postseason and have lost some incentive to play hard. If utilized correctly, the intelligent bettor can expand his/her bankroll throughout the NHL season with minimal risk.

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