How to Bet on the NHL

Hockey is one of the few gambling sports where you can have just as good a chance of winning by betting on underdogs as you do by betting favorites. Betting on an underdog can sometimes net you twice as much money. To learn how to bet on the NHL, follow these steps.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Go to your local casino sportsbook or online sportsbook to look at and bet on the hockey lines. Hockey wagers are often taken on goals, total goals and money lines.
2. Bet how many goals a team will win by. The favorite is laying goals, which means that it has to win by a certain amount of goals for the bettor to win. The underdog is taking goals, which means it can't lose by more goals than it has been given.
3. Bet on the money line or basically, which team will win. The money line is a plus or minus number in the hundreds to the right of each team. The favorite money line will be a negative number and the underdog money line will be a positive number. Money lines are written in percentages with even being 100. For example, if a favorite line is -10 and you wanted to place a $10 bet, you would have to pay $11 to make a $10 wager. Each percentage over even is called juice.
4. Some sportsbooks offer a total goals line, which allows you to bet the total goals by each team separately and the total goals by each team collectively.

Tips & Warnings

• Some sportsbooks will offer split money lines, or East Coast lines, which will give you different payouts for different goal margins.
• When betting a money line with juice, you get the juice back if you win.