NHL Betting Guide
Expansion teams, huge trades at the deadline, an uptick in physicality, and the ever-unpredictable state of the playoffs have all helped to make the NHL even more popular today.
As a result, more new and existing fans have become intrigued by the prospect of leveraging their knowledge in the world of sports betting.
So, to help newcomers, we’ve created this NHL betting guide.
Below, you’ll find everything that you need to know to get a strong footing in NHL bets. Whether you want to know how NHL betting works, what the popular markets are, what to research to inform your bets, and what to avoid when betting, we’ve got it all right here.
How Does NHL Betting Work?
As a basic premise, NHL betting works by finding outcomes that you think will happen, taking their odds, and betting on those odds. The odds will reflect the potential payout, should your bet win, while also indicating how likely the expert oddsmakers and betting markets think the outcome is to occur.
Of course, there’s more to NHL betting than just that, but that is what the core of hockey betting is: you think a certain outcome will occur, you bet on it, and hope the prediction proves correct.
Understanding the Game of NHL
The NHL is North America’s major league for the sport of ice hockey, which is known locally as just hockey, as opposed to field hockey. In every game, two teams will play three periods of 20 minutes to try to score more goals than the other team.
If it remains a tie at the 60-minute mark, there’s a sudden-death period of five minutes.
Should a goal not be scored in that overtime period, a penalty shootout will decide the winner.
Players score goals by putting the puck past the opposing goaltender and into the back of the opposing net. When a player scores a goal, up to two other players will be credited with providing an assist. NHL stats also award all of these players – the goalscorer, the primary assist, and the secondary assist – a point to denote their scoring contributions.
At the beginning of a game, each team will have five skaters and one goaltender on the ice, taking a formation of three forwards, two defensemen, and then a goaltender. Throughout the game, the teams will deploy four different forward lines of different players and three different defensive pairings.
However, teams won’t always be playing with five skaters and a goaltender on the ice. When a foul is committed, the player usually goes to the penalty box to sit out for two or five minutes. Their team continues to play a man down. This gives the other team the man-advantage for that spell, known as a power play.
Hockey is a very fluid and continuous sport that combines speed, skill, and tremendous physicality.
All of this adds to the unpredictability and how difficult it is to make predictions. Throw in the crammed schedule of 82 games – 84 games from 2026/27 – and then the playoffs, and calling outcomes in NHL betting becomes even trickier.
How Does Betting Work in the NHL?
When betting on the NHL, you’re looking to find outcomes that you think will happen, bet on their odds, and hopefully see that outcome occur in the game at hand or over the course of a season. These odds are created by expert oddsmakers who leverage statistics and historical data to present a figure that represents the likelihood of that outcome happening. The odds can also move based on team news and how much people bet on them.
We’ll delve into individual types of NHL bets below, but for context, we’ll look at moneyline and a prop bet here.
The moneyline bet is where you bet on either the home team or the road team to win the game. In a mismatch, you might see the Dallas Stars at short odds of -200 to beat the underdog Buffalo Sabres at +400. Whichever team you bet on, you want to win by the end of the whole game (including overtime).
Prop bets pertain to individual occurrences and individual player performances.
A popular NHL bet in the props section is the player points market. Here, you can find the players who’ll be in the game, such as Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Darnell Nurse, and you can bet on their odds to score a point or not score a point in the game at hand.
Understanding Odds
To know exactly what you’re betting on, you’ll need to understand how the odds work. They can take three different forms. However, changing the odds format on the same market will still show the same odds, just in a different way. For example, 1/1 or EVS in fractional odds is the exact same as 2.0 in decimal odds and +100 in American odds.
American Odds
American odds are shown on a scale from minus to plus numbers, with the smaller number indicating what’s deemed to be the more likely outcome. For example, a $10 bet on odds of -200 will return $15, while a $10 bet on odds of +200 will get you $30 if it wins.
Fractional Odds
Fractional odds can be broken up into two figures that show how much you’ll win if you bet the other.
To do this, consider the left side to be your potential winnings (not including your stake) if you bet the value on the right side. Whenever the smaller the left figure is than the right, the outcome is seen as more likely to occur. So, when you have odds of 1/4, a $10 bet would win $12.50, but $10 on 4/1 would pay $50.
Decimal Odds
Decimal odds reflect your bet’s total return – so, including the stake – but taking odds below evens can be tricky to work out. Evens are set at 2.00, and the larger that figure gets, such as to 4.00 or even 28.10, the longer the odds are, the more unlikely the oddsmakers deem the outcome to be.
A $10 bet on 4.00, for example, would win $40. Below evens, the value is a 1.X number because the 1 is your wager, while you’ll only add a return that’s a fraction of it, such as 1.10 equating to 1/10, -1000 bet, or $11 from a $10 bet.
Popular Betting Options for the NHL
On the hockey betting page, these are the bet types and betting options that continue to prove to be the most popular. Some are found within individual game markets, while others are for whole seasons or combinations of odds.
Moneyline
The moneyline bet is a straight bet on which team you think will win the game at its conclusion. This includes any potential spell of overtime or the shootout. You either bet on the home team to win or the away team to win.
Puck Line
The puck line in NHL betting applies an imaginary handicap to either team’s final score to adjust the odds. The favourite will have a -1.5 on the puck line. This means that they need to win the game by two goals or more to win the bet.
On the flip side, the underdog will get +1.5 on the puck line, which means that they need to only lose by one goal or win the game for the bet to come in.
Over/Under (Totals)
Totals betting lines are shown as two options: an under and an over. The line will refer to a set market, such as the total number of goals to be scored in the game.
As an example, a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montréal Canadiens may have a total goals line of 6.5. If the game ends 4-3 to the Maple Leafs, anyone who bet on over 6.5 will win the bet, by virtue of the seven total goals scored, and bets on under 6.5 will lose.
Prop Bets
Prop bets in NHL betting markets concern more specific statistics or outcomes. They can let you bet on individual player performance stats like scoring goals or points, or team performance statistics, like the team’s final goal count.
Due to how points are assigned and the number of goals that tend to be scored in each game, the player points market is a popular NHL bet – especially when star players like Nathan MacKinnon typically average over one point per game.
Futures
The NHL futures betting section covers all of the end-of-season outcomes, with the Stanley Cup champions odds being the most popular of the bunch.
There are also the playoffs-focused Eastern Conference winners and Western Conference winners odds, as well as individual divisional winners markets, like with the Pacific Division odds. On top of this, you can bet all of the individual trophy winners in markets like the Vezina Trophy odds.
Parlays
You don’t have to just place your stake on a single selection in NHL betting. Parlays allow you to add multiple outcomes to your bet slip from different games and place one stake across all of them. This accumulator requires all of the outcomes selected to win for the bet to come in, but it does offer increased odds due to the multiple selections. A parlay can feature anything from two to 13 or more selections, with each selection increasing the odds.
Factors to Consider Before Betting on the NHL
Regardless of whether you’re looking at placing an NHL bet or you’re doing some basketball betting, research is essential.
You should always approach NHL odds as well-informed as you can possibly be. This means reviewing key stats, recent team news, and insights from experts. Doing so may even reveal potential good value bets that defy the odds.
Key Areas to Research
Before you place an NHL bet, even if you have a strong gut feeling about an outcome, you should check these key areas of research.
Player Form
Both for prop bets and team outcomes, you should examine the recent form of key players.
This could be by looking at the game logs of the top scorers to see if they’ve been putting up points of late or examining the penalty minutes of crucial defenseman. Easily the most important player’s form to check is the goaltender, as they have a huge influence on the outcome of each game.
Team Form
NHL teams will put at least 19 players onto the ice in any given game, and even the star players are limited to around 20 minutes per game. The performance of less statistically impressive lines will still have a huge impact on the outcome. More often than not, a star player’s showing alone isn’t enough to pull the team out of a slump or a bad run. So, looking at team form is just as important for your NHL betting research.
Injuries and Fatigue
The NHL schedule is gruelling. Not only is the sport particularly taxing, but 82 – soon to be 84 – games are crammed into around 28 weeks, between which, teams cross the continent to compete. Plus, the schedule will feature what’s known as tired games, where there isn’t even one day off between two games.
So, injuries aren’t uncommon, and lengthy road trips will cause fatigue. Both of these elements can influence performances. Another important factor to note is goaltender rotation. It’s rare that a starting goalie will be called in to start in games on back-to-back nights, and usually, the elite goalies only play 60-odd games per season.
Motivation
Being an insular league, the NHL incentivizes losing for teams that simply aren’t good enough to contend for a playoff spot. This is because the lowest-ranked teams get the better odds in the NHL Draft Lottery, which lets them get the first picks of the best new talents.
As such, some poor teams can lack motivation, as can teams with important rivalry games coming up after what is currently a game they’re expected to win.
Key Statistics That Can Inform Betting Decisions
Particularly for team betting, there are several key statistics that you can tap into for direct comparisons to try to see which team has the better shot at winning. These are the key stats that can inform your NHL betting decisions.
Goals For/Against
These two columns clearly indicate how many goals each team has scored (Goals For) and how many they have conceded (Goals Against). Due to how the schedule works, these are best viewed as averages per game rather than total numbers.
Power Play Percentage
Power play percentage shows the percentage of man-advantage situations that have resulted in scoring a goal for that team. Good teams are expected to hit a number in the mid-20s or higher. What can help with this key stat is looking at the opponent’s PIMs (penalty minutes) to see if they’re likely to get plenty of time on the power play.
Penalty Kill Percentage
The penalty kill units are what a team rolls out when they cause a foul and face the opposing power play. Good penalty kills tend to get a percentage of around 78 percent or higher. A strong penalty kill can make up for particularly physical teams that collect a lot of penalty minutes.
Shots on Goal
Shots on goal can be very telling in context.
On the face of it, more shots on goal is better because it’ll trouble the goalie more and increase the likelihood of a goal. However, it’s important to contrast this with the Goals For column, as that will tell you how effective the team is when it fires shots on goal.
Save Percentage
A goaltender’s save percentage is very telling of how well they’re playing. Generally speaking, a goalie can expect to face 30 shots per game. As an example, in the 2024/25 season, there was an average of 3.01 goals per game per team. So, a save percentage of higher than 0.910 – which would show three goals from 30 shots – beats the scoring average.
Home/Away Record
Some teams are masters of making their home arena a fortress, but then struggle on their travels. This can be due to team directives, wanting to go all-out for their home fans and playing a more restrictive style on the road. Either way, the records for home and away can be telling of a team’s hopes of success in the next game.
Head-to-Head Records
The strategies, line use, physicality, and experience of goaltenders vary greatly across the NHL. This will often create sometimes even surprising bogey teams for even the best of them. This makes the head-to-head record between two teams a key statistic to take into consideration.
What You Should Avoid When Betting on the NHL
Whenever you engage in some NHL betting, just as it’s important to do your research, it’s also crucial to avoid these major missteps.
Chasing Losses
When you lose a bet, never turn to make another bet in an attempt to recover that loss. It’s a huge error to make, particularly because those who chase losses tend to bet in haste, overlooking sound statistical knowledge for big odds and big returns that are longshots to land at best.
Avoiding Bankroll Management
Before you bet, you should always set your bankroll and stick to it. This means establishing a set sum of money that you’re willing to lose over a given period of time. Poor bankroll management would be blowing all of this on your first bet, cycling winnings into the bankroll instead of withdrawing them, or just ignoring your bankroll rules.
Random Betting Without Consideration of Other Factors
As is the purpose of most of this page, doing your research is the only way to prepare for a bet.
If you go onto the betting page and just tap odds at random, place the bet, there is a greater chance you’ve already lost.