There is a lot of money to be made betting NHL hockey, yet it gets the least action of any of the major US sports. And that is why it is a good bet. Because the oddsmakers are spending all their time on football, baseball and basketball, leaving hockey as an afterthought. You don’t have to be a huge hockey fan or know everything about the game to successfully handicap games. Once you take the time to do your research on teams and games, you will see that it gets easier to pick out winning situations. You want to have as much information as possible to make decisions on bets, but we will focus on some of the lesser known factors for betting hockey.

We are going to discuss how to make betting NHL hockey a profitable venture and some of the specific things to look for when handicapping a game.

You can’t just look at the record of a team. Strength of schedule is probably more important for betting NHL hockey than any other pro sport. In the second half of the season especially, when you have a good number of games to look back on, it is important to know if a team’s record was built against a bunch of teams that were below .500 or above. You will see plenty of examples of this from playoff series past as teams with good records have been blown out in the first round. Why? Because they had beat up on a bunch of sub .500 teams during the season.

Another factor that will help you a lot betting NHL hockey looking at how teams do against opponents above .500 and opponents below .500. This is more useful in the second half of the season after the all star break. There are quite a few teams out there that will pad their records against sub-par teams and then get beaten fairly handily when they play others. There is not much explanation needed for this tip. Just check out the stats in the second half of the season and see if it doesn’t pan out a good percentage of the time.

Another important point when it comes to betting NHL hockey concerns the underdog. Do not be afraid to bet the underdog in hockey. In fact, you will have to bet the underdog quite a bit if you want to be profitable over the course of a season. Even in close matchups you are usually paying a fair price for betting the favorite on the money line. And when you lose a few -150’s it can take a while to get back even. Learn how to find good value. There are a lot of good plays at +135 and better and wins like these go a long way. Once you start following and handicapping hockey on a regular basis you will be able to pick these winning bets.

Nothing can replace solid research when it comes to betting NHL hockey. These are just a few things to look for, but remember that the more information you have the better.

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