Football at both the college level and in the NFL occupies most of the attention of sports bettors this time of the year and online sportsbooks throughout the Internet sports betting industry are also preoccupied with providing all the betting lines you need to bet on the games.
This time of the year can also create an excellent chance to pad your overall sports betting bankroll with the start of another season of hockey in the NHL. With so much attention being paid to all the weekly football betting opportunities, you are bound to find quite a few soft money lines and totals for the early part of the season in the NHL. The trick is to find the online sportsbooks that work best for you when it comes to your overall NHL betting strategy.
The logical starting point would be any of your existing sportsbooks where you already have an active betting account. However, before you start plunking down bets on NHL games you need to make sure that you are tracking line movements and shopping the betting odds from one book to the next. Line movements can give you a good idea where the early money is going in any particular NHL matchup, but it is also important that you are also tracking the numbers across one book to the next.
The big game on tonight’s NHL schedule at Book A has the St. Louis Blues listed as +112 road underdogs against the favored Chicago Blackhawks at -124. The total line for this game has been set at 5 with an equal -105 betting line each way.
When you flip over to Book B to check the betting lines for the same exact NHL matchup, you find that the money line on the Blues is set at +110 and to bet the Blackhawks as favorites you are dealing with a -140 money line. The total is also set at five, but it is an even money bet on the UNDER verse a -120 betting line to take the OVER.
In this scenario, it does not matter which side you are betting on in this game. The clear choice as to where to place the bet is Book A based on the current betting lines.
A good betting strategy early in the NHL season is to take things slow and get a good feel for all 30 teams. The offseason in the NHL brings substantial roster moves to almost every team and it takes time to find the right combinations of which players work the best together when they are on the ice at the same time. Some goalies will get hot right out of the gate, while some others might need a few games to shake of the rust.
As with most professional sports, the results from the preseason exhibition games are worthless when it comes to betting on the games that count for real in the standings. There will always be a couple of great betting opportunities given the disparity in the lines as in the example above, but you are probably better off going with a few high-unit plays as opposed to betting on a high number of games.
The same thing could be said for the early NHL betting lines at the sportsbooks. Tracking the opening numbers across a couple of different books is a great way to get a feel for how each betting outlet is reacting to the early results. You might be able to get a great price on an undervalued team that is listed as an underdog as opposed to betting a favorite that is way overvalued in their betting odds.
