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A new NHL season is ready to start and after a rough year betting on the ice, you are seeking new solutions. Or, maybe you stepped away from betting hockey for a few years and after watching last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, you want to reenter the betting marketplace.
Whatever the reason, here are helpful strategies to deploy at the top-rated sportsbooks.
Know the Goalie Stats and About the Defense in Front of Him
Much like in baseball, you start by looking at the numbers for a starting pitcher, this applies to the game in the rink. A hot goalie can win games they shouldn’t or lose games with weak goals allowed.
Here are key statistics to follow about goalies:
- Goals Against Average Both Home and Away
- Save Percentage 5×5
Goals Against is a good barometer to start because it generates a picture. Goalies having a save percentage over 91% are doing the job night in and night out. Daily, watch for what goalies in a particular year are in the Top 7 in saves, their win percentage and those in the bottom and their record.
This can tell you not only whether are they skilled or not in stopping pucks, but also if the goaltender is coming up big or not late in the third period having a one-goal lead. If they stop pucks and find ways to win, that speaks to their skills and the defensemen around them. Netminders having a high save percentage, yet having about a .500 record suggests he and his teammates are not coming through at crunch time and if they lose in overtime more often than not, the overall defense is flawed.
Using this thinking, if you have a bottom-seven goalie at even strength (5×5), he’s probably not doing his job well enough and sometimes the players in front of him are only making things worse.
Check For Injuries or Other Occurrences That Move Lines
If you like to get your bets on hockey the night before or before you go to work, you could undermine your success.
Goalie scratches are not common, but they happen. If a team has two netminders that are close to equal, the drop-off is often not precipitous. However, if one goalie starts two-thirds of the time, there is a reason, and typically the backup is not strong enough.
Let’s say you have a home team with the No. 1 goalie and that team is a -165 favorite. That puck-stopper tweaked his back in the morning workout and is pulled six hours before the puck drops, then the line plunges to -120. You could still win depending on the team, but as the odds suggest, at a much lower rate.
Learn why a team would fall 45 cents or more on the money line in one game while another club would fall only 20 cents with the backup between the pipes.
Rested vs. Tired Teams
Though linemakers will build numbers into a line for one squad playing three times in four days, with the last back-to-back, facing an opponent with a day or two of rest, often that is not enough.
A team with heavy legs could be speed-boated by a fresher foe. One team looks like it’s skating on two-edge blade skates in puddles while the other roars up and down the ice like they are barely touching the frozen pond.
This can be especially useful in finding underdogs that are rested against more worn-out favorites. While these situations don’t always win, it makes sense to always study the matchups.
Study Special Teams
Even with recent expansion in the last several years, the overall talent is nicely spread out, except for the five or six top clubs and the five or six worst outfits. A deciding factor is often those who score power-play goals or who regularly kill penalties.
In this case, you are looking for a special teams matchup between one of the best versus one of the worst. Like anything in sports, just because you have a decisive edge it doesn’t mean it will work out. However, if you are betting pucks, you would prefer having an edge rather than being on the wrong side of such a situation.
Never Fear Betting Into Hockey Streaks
In spite of having just 82 games a season, throughout the year, teams of all different types of skill and talent levels will have winning or losing streaks of seven or more games.
It is tricky about when to jump on board because if you wait too long you can get burned in the contest you jumped in or feel lousy for not seeking a team that goes from four to nine-game winning or losing and you miss out.
The best rule to follow, when the team is on a three-game winning or losing streak, make sure that you would want to bet it for Game 4, and if you like the situation, back it. If that wins, don’t be afraid to back that same club until that streak ends.
This is a simple way to add profit and just make sure the odds are tolerable because the last thing you want is to go 3-1 and lose money.
