Throughout its history, hockey has been considered a rather harsh sport, if only because it originated in countries with cold climates, and it is precisely its toughness and uncompromising nature that attract a multimillion-strong audience. There were fears that ice hockey would suffer from global warming, but modern technology has had the opposite effect: ice arenas and teams have begun to appear even in places where they have never existed before. In an effort to meet user demand, BetLabel offers visitors the opportunity to place bets on hockey.
Hockey betting
Features of hockey betting on the BetLabel website
If you have never bet on hockey before, it is worth paying special attention to the specifics of this discipline in the context of sports betting. First of all, it is a very dynamic sport: the score can change quite often, and sharply, without any obvious build-up to a goal. There is a fairly high percentage of random rebounds and sensations, caused, in particular, by the realization of the majority on the part of the potential underdog. Analyzing pre-match statistics in such conditions is more difficult, but, on the other hand, it increases the excitement.
BetLabel offers visitors a very deep list of hockey bets: for example, for the NHL and KHL, the administration rolls out 1000-1100 markets for each match. This means that you can predict not only the outcomes, handicaps, and totals, but also other statistical aspects of the game, including not for the entire match, but for its individual segments. This opens up broad prospects for in-play betting: those who accurately grasp the scenario can win several bets during a single match.
If you like in-depth analysis and prefer pre-match bets, consider several aspects that cannot be ignored when betting on hockey:
- Like any athletes, hockey players have periods of peak and decline in form, and because the hockey calendar is usually very busy, this provokes the emergence of long series that do not actually say anything about the real strength of a particular team.
- As a rule, each team can field several lineups: this is an advantage for some teams if they can adequately replace tired or injured leaders, while the strength of others may be rather questionable due to the actual lack of a bench.
- The goalkeeper plays an extremely important role in hockey: if the main goalkeeper is absent, this can drastically reduce the favorite’s chances of success.
- Hockey tournaments are played with fairly short breaks between matches, while NHL and KHL competitions involve very long flights, so a difficult schedule with several long trips in a row can wear a team out.
It remains to be added that BetLabel’s betting line usually includes 350-400 hockey matches (at least during the peak season), which means that you can place bets on national tournaments in different countries and on junior leagues in North America.
Main types of bets
A thousand markets is a great choice for placing a potentially winning bet on hockey, but it is understandable that most users limit themselves to only the most popular markets. If you are a complete beginner to hockey betting, here is a brief overview of the betting options you should start with.
Outcomes (1X2), double chance
The outcome bet is the most common type of bet in all sports represented on BetLabel without exception. It offers to determine who will be the winner of a particular match – the home team or the visitors. There are no full-fledged draws in hockey, but bets on them are accepted: if the opponents bring the game to a shootout, a bet on a draw will be considered a winning bet.
It is not always easy to clearly name the winner – sometimes the opponents appear to be roughly equal in strength. A double chance bet serves as insurance for the bettor in this case: it allows you to choose two out of three possible outcomes. If you still see a certain advantage for one of the sides, but are not ready to bet on its victory, bet on 1x or x2, predicting that your favorite will definitely not lose. In crucial matches where an uncompromising struggle is expected, it makes sense to bet on 12 – anyone can win, but there will definitely be no draw!
Totals and handicaps
A total in hockey is a bet on the outcome of the game. In the classic sense, it is a bet on the number of goals that will be scored, without reference to a specific team: that is, you are not trying to name the winner, but are predicting that the match will be high-scoring, or vice versa. The modern approach allows you to guess the total for one of the teams – again, without specifying whether it will win or lose. A standard total is guessing whether the number of goals will be more or less than a specified number, but BetLabel also accepts bets on whether the number of goals will be even or odd.
A handicap bet does not require you to specify the exact number of goals, but here you will have to indicate the potential advantage of the favorite over the underdog, or vice versa, show that the formally weaker team will put up a fight. For example, by betting on the home team to win with a handicap of -2.5, you are predicting that they will beat their opponent by at least three goals; such a bet is always more risky than a simple bet on the winner, increasing the excitement and the odds of the coupon. Conversely, a bet on a +1.5 handicap means that there will be no rout of this team (in the worst case scenario, it would need one more goal to tie the game), and a +0.5 handicap is effectively equivalent to a bet on a double outcome.
Rates by period
If you follow both teams closely or have simply studied the pre-match statistics in depth, you may find that the teams have their own styles: for example, today’s hosts traditionally take a long time to get going, while today’s visitors, on the contrary, tend to start briskly but then fade later on. In this situation, predicting the winner of the match may be controversial, but BetLabel allows you to bet on the result of a period, and visitors can bet that the hosts will lose the first third of the match. In fact, this is a bet on the outcome, but not of the entire match, but of one period; you can bet not only on the first period, but also on the second or third periods. It is possible to break down other markets into periods as well. For example, if you understand the game trends, you can successfully predict the handicaps and totals for individual periods.
Live betting and its features
The BetLabel administration is ready to accept bets on hockey not only before the match, but also during it, with a natural gradual reduction in the number of available markets as some of them become irrelevant. At the same time, players should take into account the possibility of extremely rapid changes in odds: in hockey, every puck, every substitution, and every penalty can affect the game at any moment. For this reason, you need to be especially vigilant: it may happen that you added a bet to your slip with one odds, but by the time the bet was placed, the odds had changed significantly; in such a situation, it sometimes makes sense to refuse the bet. On the other hand, with active involvement in the process and a good understanding of the logic of a particular match, an experienced bettor is able to make several consecutive bets on one match.
