How to win on hockey bets

21.04.2021

Hockey is the second most popular sport in the world (the first, of course, is football). It is second in line with the line width offered by bookmakers, which makes it a full-fledged bigmarket. In terms of betting volume, this sport is constantly fighting for second place with tennis, basketball and e-sports that have grown, but in the season players prefer to place their bets on hockey.

Hockey nuances

Probably almost every person in the world has a general idea of what this sport looks like. Five hefty men on each side, plus goalkeepers, equipped no worse than a sapper when clearing a bomb. All of these players are frantically running around a relatively small box filled with ice and trying to hit each other's goal with a puck using hockey sticks.

But this is only a superficial glance, in fact, hockey contains many subtleties and nuances that significantly affect the course of the game in different tournaments. And therefore, on your bets.

Site size

In North America it is highly regulated and is 200 feet long and 85 feet wide (approximately 61 meters by 26 meters). In Europe, there is no strict regulation and deviations in parameters up to five meters are allowed. European courts, on average, are wider than American ones and differ slightly in ice markings.

This circumstance gives more space to European athletes, especially when playing in incomplete teams. Hockey is getting faster, there is no such hustle and bustle and overcrowding per square meter, as in the NHL.

Removals

In hockey, players are removed very often, and this factor has a particularly strong effect on the match. Sometimes, due to a couple of referee decisions, the match can completely turn over. The player can be sent off for two, five or ten minutes. All this time, his team will play in the minority.

In some cases, a player may return to the ice if his team conceded a goal. If the violation was very gross or repetitive, the player is sent off for the rest of the game, and one of his teammates is serving a penalty time for him.

Substitutions

The number of substitutions in hockey is not limited, they occur directly during the game. It is only forbidden for more than six players to be on the court at the same time, including the goalkeeper. As a rule, there are 20 or more players in the application for a match, and they come out with links played between themselves. The elimination of one player can disrupt the well-coordinated work of the whole team.

Tournament points format

The basic format adopted in most seasonal tournaments: 2 points for a clean victory, 1 point for a loss in overtime or shootout, 0 points for the team's defeat in regular time. But in some championships (by the way, the KHL abandoned this format only two years ago), 3 points are awarded for a clean victory, 2 points for a win in extra time, 1 point for a defeat in overtime or in shootouts, and 0 points for a clean defeat of the team. .

Extra time format

Even in the NHL they can't come up with an ideal formula for identifying a winner. The last two seasons have gone by different rules regarding overtime. Now the format is adopted there, when in the regular season they play a five-minute 3x3, but before the first goal. If in five minutes the teams have not identified a winner, then a shootout is awarded. The playoffs are played 5x5 and the overtime runs for twenty minutes with breaks in between. And until someone scores a goal, the game will not end. The same format is now adopted in the KHL.

All these subtleties must be known and taken into account when making a bet in bookmakers. It is also very desirable to understand the nuances of different hockey tournaments, at least the differences between the cup tournament system and regular championships.

Hockey in bookmakers

In Russian legal offices, the unconditional first place is occupied by the lines for hockey from the BC "Melbet" and "1X Stavka". Their line is identical and it really boggles the imagination. Matches of TOP tournaments are scheduled with up to 1,000+ betting options per match, which is no longer available in any bookmaker's office. At the same time, the margin for KHL and NHL hockey starts at just 1.5%.

Also very good hockey bets are offered by Marathonbet, Leon and Fonbet. But they do not reach the depth of the list of leaders, and the margin there is significantly higher. Smallmarket lovers can find statistical bets on the hockey markets at Betcity, Zenitbet and Tennis. As for foreign offices, we can traditionally mention Pinnacle, Bet365 and Unibet.

What can be bet on hockey matches

Standard markets that can be found almost everywhere: match outcomes, totals, handicaps, individual totals and exact scores. Advanced offices add such markets to TOP matches as:

Bets on the race up to N goals;
Bets on the most productive period;
Bets on comparison of the effectiveness of periods;
Bets on a clean sheet or a strong-willed victory for each team;
Bets on the method of identifying the winner (overtime, shootouts, regular time);
Bets on the outcome or correct score for N minutes; {{ 1}} Bets on how many minutes the draw will last;
Bets on the amount of minutes on which goals will be scored;
Bets on individual player performance;
Bets on whether there will be a hat -trick, empty net, majority or minority goal.

And much more. In “1X Bet” there is even a “goalkeeper will score a goal” market at odds of 1,000. Bets on various combined outcomes are also popular: 1st goal + outcome, total + outcome, 1st period + match, and so on. Most of these markets are also available in the context of at least the first period, and often a prematch is given for each of the three game segments.

An important point: bookmakers do not have a single format regarding the calculation of bets on hockey outcomes, handicaps and totals. Most bookmakers (for example, "1X", "Melbet", "Marathonbet", "William Hill") accept bets strictly on the regular time of the match. Rare bookmakers (for example, "Bet365") - only with extra time. And some - Unibet, Pinnacle - offer bets on both of these markets.

Hockey betting strategies

The analysis of hockey and football matches is very similar. The main factors are: the current form, motivation and attitude of the team for the match, the history of personal meetings with the opponent, problems with the composition (injuries, disqualifications) and the factor of fatigue. The main difference between hockey and football in terms of betting is that in hockey the performance is higher, therefore, comebacks and mirror segments of matches occur more often. Therefore, hockey is a great sport for live betting.

Draw in the match

One of the popular strategies in hockey (and any sport) is to determine the results of a draw. There are not as many of them as in football, but this is not uncommon and in the last couple of years there has been a clear trend towards an increase in the number of draws in many leagues. The odds for a draw in hockey start from 4.00 and can reach the odds of 6.00 and even higher (if the match is with a clear favorite). It is enough to learn how to identify 20 - 25% of draws in order to get a good plus on the strategy at a distance.

It is quite simple to identify draws: there are “peace-loving” teams and whole leagues predisposed to this outcome. You can place bets on prolonged draw-free series and catch the desired outcome. There is an even more effective strategy: bet on draws by period.

Strategies for draws in the period

This is better, primarily because there are three times more options for a bet and three times more accumulated statistics, which increases its representativeness. It should be borne in mind that in most leagues, bets for periods are smallmarket. On the one hand, this is a minus, since the margin is higher and the limits are lower, and on the other hand, it is a plus, since bookmakers are not particularly concerned with such markets and, as a rule, set average values for such bets.

The essence of the strategy is to identify these deviations from the mean. For example, Kunlun drew more than half of their third periods in the 2020-21 KHL season, while San Jose and Florida in the NHL just fell short of 50% of their first periods tied.

In the German DEL league, the number of draws in the first period has been on the rise for several years and has been over 40% this season. Bookmakers continue to give standard quotes for their matches, from 3.00 and higher, as for other teams. This is a great basis for strategy, even catch-up is appropriate here.

Total bets in the period

The same can be done with totals. Now there are statistical resources about hockey and other sports in Russian. Using them, you can find tendencies that give an excellent advantage against the bookmaker and build on their basis your strategies for profitable bets.

Among such resources:

24score.pro
nb-bet.com
r-hockey.ru

Most of the big and not so big hockey leagues are there, with detailed statistics on many fronts. For example, the following trends can be identified:

The teams "Sochi", "Severstal" and "Siberia" in the KHL often play dry first periods. In the last season, Sochi had 34% of them, and Severstal and Siberia have been in this TOP for several seasons. The odds for these bets reach 4.00 at individual bookmakers.

Ottawa in the NHL often play second periods on TB (1.5), they do it in three matches out of four ... And if you look only at the team's away games, then this is almost a surefire: 19 times out of 21 (90.5%).

Metallurg Nk in the VHL in almost half home matches punched a large total of 2.5 in the third periods. And "Toros" has about the same figure in the third periods of away matches.

And there are dozens of such trends for creating a strategy, if you wish. Some of the trends are relevant for years and even the ones shown here are likely to continue to work in the next seasons.

Handicap strategy -1.5

This strategy recommends selecting approximately equal teams in the prematch of the game, but still giving one of them an advantage. On it you need to put F (-1.5) washers. In hockey, the following thing often happens at the end of the match: the team concedes one puck and changes its goalkeeper for a sixth field player in the hope of recouping. In this situation, interceptions of the puck and a goal into an empty net occur quite often.

For the same reason, it is important to place bets in live TB, ITB or “the next goal will be scored by N team”. When there is a minute and a half left until the end of the game, the odds for this market will be high, from 3.00 and higher. And the probability is greatly increased. It is better to make a bet through a simple TB, since the inferior team also has a good chance of winning back in the majority.

Outsider wins

Betting on underdogs with high odds of 3.00 or more makes sense in leagues with high match density. Best in the NHL, but some other championships are fine. The essence of the strategy is that in conditions of increased workload, constant flights and a lack of motivation to win in every game, favorites often give unplanned points to outsiders.

Conclusion