Hockey betting for real money allows fans to make a profit on their knowledge of a game that is beloved by millions on both the professional and amateur level. If you’re new to the sport, or at least the wagering side of it, you might be a bit confused by all the options and terminology. That’s why we’re here to help you out with this in-depth hockey betting guide to help both beginners and experts.

In terms of popularity in North America and Europe, very few sports can match hockey. It’s a sport that captivates millions with its combination of skill and physicality. If you’ve always watched but haven’t yet understood how to make wagers on the outcome, we’re here to help you out with everything you need to know.

In this hockey betting guide, we’ll talk about the types of wagers that you can make and the different odds that they bring. We’ll explain where to bet on hockey, and we’ll give you some tips on how to wager successfully on the sport at online gambling sites. Finally, we’ll answer some of the most popular questions people tend to have about betting on hockey for real money.

To kick things off, we want to provide you with our list of the best sites for hockey betting if you’re trying to get in on the action without reading the rest of this guide.

A Beginner Guide

For those who haven’t watched much hockey or might have seen it in passing, it’s a sport played on ice by two teams of six. There are five players on each team that have the run of the ice attempting to score goals, while the sixth member of the team, the goalie, mostly stays within the net area and tries to prevent goals from being scored.

Goals are scored when the puck is directed, usually by one of the players’ sticks, past the goalie and into the net. The team with the most goals at the end of play wins.

There are obviously many more intricate rules that you should know if you’re going to start to betting on hockey. For now, we’re going to assume that you have enough of a basis on the sport that you can start the betting process. First, we’ll check out the types of bets that are among the most popular in the sport.

Type of Hockey Bets

Now, it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of the bets that you can usually make on games at hockey betting sites and at land-based sportsbooks. Each of these bets will include their own unique set of hockey betting odds that you’ll have to navigate.

Moneyline Hockey Betting

The moneyline is the way that you can make the simplest bet in all of hockey—a bet on who will win the game. If the team you pick wins, it’s as simple as that. But there is a line that you have to heed, since it will affect how you will get paid.

If sportsbooks or online hockey betting sites simply allowed bettors to wager on who would win and offered them all even-money return, they would get clobbered. After all, some hockey teams are better than others. There has to be some mechanism to distinguish favorites and underdogs, and that’s where the moneyline comes into play.

The moneyline is built around a base unit of $100. In the case of the favorite in a hockey game, you will usually have to bet more than $100 to win $100. Meanwhile, for the underdog, you will bet $100 to win more than $100 in return.

As an example, take a look at this sample hockey betting line (Shark vs Flyers) :

Sharks	-125
Flyers	+150

What this means is that San Jose is the favorite in this game. To win $100 betting on them to win the game, you have to bet $125. Meanwhile, if you bet $100 on Philadelphia, the underdog, to win, you will win $125 if they do indeed defeat San Jose.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily have to bet $100 or $125 in this case. You can bet higher or lower. The ratio of the favorite and underdog will be in place and govern how much you win, no matter the size of the bet.

The Puck Line

If you’ve ever done some sports betting, you know a little bit about something known as the point spread. The point spread is essentially a method used by oddsmakers to even out two teams. Well, the puck line in hockey works in a similar fashion.

The main difference is that total of the puck line in hockey never changes. It is always 1.5. In other words, the favorite of any hockey game is always favored to win by 1.5 goals. The reason that the puck line never moves is because not many goals are scored in a typical hockey game, which means that larger spreads wouldn’t make much sense.

Sabres	-1.5 (-185)
Bruins	+1.5 (+155)

As an example of the puck line when betting on NHL games, let’s say that Buffalo is the puck line favorite over Boston. At the end of the game, the score is Sabres 3, Bruins 2.

The Sabres won but by only one goal, which means that a bet on the Bruins would have won the puck line wager. After all, 2 plus the 1.5 puck line gives Boston 3.5, more than the 3 that Buffalo scored.

Over/Under Hockey Bets

Over/under is a common concept in betting team sports. In the case of NHL betting, a line is set on how many goals might be scored by both teams in a single contest. You have to decide on whether the teams will score more or less than that total.

Over 6 Goals	-110
Under 6 Goals	-110

For example, imagine that the over/under for a typical game is 6. At the end of the game, one team has defeated the other 3 to 1. That means the total scored for the game is 4, which is below the over/under number, meaning that the under was the correct bet.

Games usually feature an over/under hockey betting line of anywhere from 5 to 6.5. Again, the people who set these NHL betting odds do this because they know that a hockey game is typically low-scoring.

The Grand Salami

This is a bet unique to hockey and usually reserved for professional action. You can bet on all the games on a typical day’s schedule, which gives you reason to keep track of everything going on in one calendar day.

The Grand Salami is essentially an over/under bet on the entire schedule.

For example, if there are 10 games on a day’s schedule, an oddsmaker might set the Grand Salami number at something like 55.

You can then bet over or under that number. At the end of the day, you would tally up the total scores of all 10 games to see where the total landed and find out if it went over or under.

One note on the puck line, over/under and Grand Salami bets: These will all have a moneyline attached to them as well. It will usually be a number close to 100 (like -110), since these are bets where there isn’t as clear a favorite or underdog as you would find in a straight win or lose bet.

Future Bets

Futures bets allow you to wager on some aspect of the sport that is still well down the road calendar-wise. For example, at the start of the season, you might make a bet on a team to win the NHL Stanley Cup. Below we have included sample odds to win the 2021 Stanley Cup:

• Colorado Avalanche (+550)
• Vegas Golden Knights (+650)
• Tampa Bay Lightning (+800)
• Toronto Maple Leafs (+1000)
• Philadelphia Flyers (+1500)
• Edmonton Oilers (+1500)
• Pittsburgh Penguins (+1700)
• Washington Capitals (+1800)
• Vancouver Canucks (+1800)
• Dallas Stars (+2000)

The lure of futures bets is that they can pay off a lot on a small wager. If you were to bet $10 on the Philadelphia Flyers to win the 2021 Stanley Cup at +1500 and they end up winning, you would win $160.00.

Hockey Prop Bets

Prop bets can be tied into some aspect of the game besides the score of the two teams. For example, you might be able to wager on which player scores the first goal, or an over/under of how many saves a particular goalie might get. These bets are a fun way to dissect the game and possibly come out a winner.