Definition of Hockey Betting

Hockey is easily one of the most exciting sports in the world.

The sport combines speed, quickness, dexterity and brute strength. Hockey is absolutely one of the fastest games on earth, as players hurtle around the ice at more than 30 kilometres per hour.

The game of hockey is especially popular in Canada, Europe, Russia and parts of the United States. The growth of the game of hockey has been helped tremendously by the Winter Olympics and World Junior tournaments, as the game has gained tremendous exposure in countries such as Germany.

The NHL (National Hockey League) is the top of the mountain when it comes to ice hockey, as most of the best players in the world play in the NHL.

There are other popular leagues, however, including the KHL and Swedish Hockey League, to name a few.

The game is a truly international one, as the NHL's best players hail from countries such as Canada, Russia, Sweden and the United States, just to name a few.

Let's look at some of the basics when it comes to betting on the game of hockey:

-

Straight Up Betting

This is pretty simple - who do you think will end up winning the game?

The odds for straight up betting might look like this:

Vancouver Canucks, 1.61
Montreal Canadiens, 2.20

This means that if you bet $100 on the Vancouver Canucks to win straight up, you would receive $61 in total profit back (as well as your original bet) if they ended up winning the game.

On the other hand, if you think that the Canadiens might pull off the upset, you'd be looking at a total profit of $120.

Puck Line

This is the equivalent to the spread in football.

A puck line might look like this:

Vancouver Canucks, -1.5, 2.75
Montreal Canadiens, +1.5, 1.35

If you think that the Canucks will win the game easily, you would want to take them to win -1.5.

This means that the Canucks would need to win by 2 or more goals in order for you to win the bet. Having said that, you'd be looking at a very decent 2.75 payout if they did accomplish this task.

On the other hand, if you want a bit of a cushion and would like to take the Canadiens to win, you could take the Canadiens +1.5.

This means that if they lost the game 4-3, you would still win your bet.

The downside is that the payout is much smaller.

Over/Under

With this betting line, you are picking the total number of goals that will be scored in the game.

For instance, with the Canucks/Canadiens game, the over/under might look like this:

Over 4.5 goals, 1.95
Under 4.5 goals, 1.86

If you think that the game will be a high-scoring affair, you'd want to take the Over.

If you think that the two goaltenders are hot and that there won't be much in the way of scoring, you would want to take the under.

-

In addition, you can bet on all sorts of different things, such as:

Which team will score first.
Who will score.
Which team will win a specific period

And much more.