There are many different ways to bet on hockey.
Here’s a look at all of the options you have when wagering on Canada’s national winter sport.

Moneylines

This is the most common way to bet on hockey. All you have to do is pick which team you think will win the game and bet on them. If they win, you win. Unlike Proline and the other provincial sports lotteries, it doesn’t matter if they win in overtime or the shootout (unless you bet on them to win in regulation time). Just win, baby.

Pucklines

The puckline is a nice tool to use if you don’t want to lay a lot of juice on a favourite or want to increase your chances of winning with an underdog. The puckline is hockey’s version of the point spread in basketball and football or the run line in baseball. If you take a team at -1.5 on the puckline, that means your team will have to win by more than one goal. Often, laying -1.5 on the puckline will turn a heavy favourite into an underdog return, since many games in hockey are decided by one goal. Conversely, if you take a team +1.5 on the puckline, that means they can either win the game or lose by one goal and you’ll be a winner. You’ll have to pay a lot more juice to take +1.5 on the puckline because it increases your winning percentage that much more.

Over/unders (totals)

This can be a fun way to bet on a game, particularly when you don’t have a strong feeling on which team will win. The oddsmakers will provide a total (generally ranging from as low as 5 to as high as 7) and you bet whether the teams will score more goals than that in the game (over) or less than the total (under). Totals are also nice because they usually don’t cost you that much juice to play.

Live betting

Live betting is a way to bet on the game while it’s in progress. Odds will be adjusted after each period, at which point you can wager on the moneyline, puckline or total once again. If a team is trailing and you think they have a strong chance of coming back to win, you can get some really fat odds on them through live betting. Or if you think the team that is leading will hold on for the win, you can bet on them too (it’ll cost you quite a bit of juice to do that, though).

Futures

This is your chance to gaze into your crystal ball and bet on what you foresee happening. Do you think the Penguins will win the Stanley Cup this year? Maybe you believe the Canucks will win the Northwest Division. These are just two examples of things you can bet on through futures betting, and at some pretty nice odds as well. Pinnacle Sports is a great place to find some good Futures odds. And a cool thing is that you can bet Futures throughout the season, so if you think a team is starting to show some improvement, you can catch some value before the oddsmakers catch on.

Props

Betting props offers you the chance to bet on individual milestones that could be reached during the season. Bodog offers a ton of NHL props like who will win the Art Ross, Calder, Norris, Hart, Vezina and Rocket Richard trophies. You can also bet on players reaching a certain number of points during the season, whether they be Sidney Crosby or Keith Yandle. Props can also often be found for individual games, where you can bet on whether Alex Ovechkin will score a goal that night or Roberto Luongo will get a shutout.