The game

The NHL is widely regarded as the biggest league in the world, it is watched worldwide like many of the US sports.

What other leagues are there?

In addition to NHL, Betfair offers markets on 15 other leagues from 12 countries. The game is especially popular in Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic ELH to the Russian Superliga, and not to forget the UK's Elite League. As a result there is seldom a shortage of games to bet on.

The Game

Apart from the fact that you need ice, skates, sticks and a puck (the little rubber black disc that acts as hockey's football), the basics of the game are relatively easy to understand.

A game consists of three 20-minute periods. If the game is tied at the end of these a period of sudden-death overtime is played. A game which remains tied after overtime is settled by a penalty shootout. Ties are not possible during the regular NHL season.

The daunting aspect of ice hockey is the sheer speed at which the game is played. This is true both of the action on the ice itself, but also how quickly team line-ups change during play. Ice hockey is different to any sport most people are used to watching. Ice hockey offers a welcome change. It can be quite daunting at first but after watching a couple of games you will start to get used to it, so persevere.

Some of the rules are tricky to understand initially, but the NHL site offers good explanations of it all: www.nhl.com/rules/index.html. The illustration videos are particularly helpful in understanding offside, icing, two-line pass and the ins-and-outs of power plays.

What can you bet on?

Ice Hockey presents a number of betting opportunities.

The Money Line:

The most common market bet in Las Vegas - the final result of the match, just the two teams to bet on. This option includes all overtime and penalty shootouts.

Regular Time Match Odds:

What will the result be after regular time? The tie is an option in this market.

Regular Time Goals:

How many goals will be scored during regular time?

As ice hockey is a higher-scoring sport than football, the line here is usually 5.5 or 6.5 goals.

Handicaps:

Handicap lines are always +1.5 goals to the side deemed weakest. Important things to consider when betting on this market include home advantage, starting line-ups (are there any star players injured or being rested?), how tired or fresh each team is, and form. It is often possible to back teams to beat the handicap if you correctly analyse all these features from both teams' perspectives.

Long-term markets:

Betfair has markets for the Stanley Cup winner as well as the Eastern and Western Conference winners. As is always the case the outright winner year-on-year is extremely difficult to call but these markets are good if you back a team you think will do well at a big price and then lay them back later in the season.

In-Play Betting

In-Play betting advice:

Don't overreact:

Top teams can often pull back seemingly large deficits fairly quickly, so if they go two goals down early in the match it's not the end of the world. Conversely, if you know a team has just had one of those 'nightmare starts', the backing a strong team to win from two goals down can offer extremely attractive odds. With an average of six goals per game, conceding a goal early isn't game over.

Information sources:

NASN televise live matches each week. Live scores and team news can be found on most American sports wires. But ice hockey is treated differently to football - the markets are NOT suspended when a goal is scored, so be careful leaving offers on the screen when not watching the match. It can be done, but don't work to too tight a margin. As with any market on Betfair, always expect someone else to have know more than you, and someone else to have access to faster information/pictures. This need not be a big deal - just be careful leaving up bets for too long, especially in the closing stages of a game where late goals can make all the difference.

This game is QUICK:

As was touched on earlier, this game really is fast. The old saying "blink and you'll miss it" really does apply here. This, however, is a positive in that ice hockey offers a really dynamic and volatile betting platform from which the savvy punter can take advantage. This being so, the previous point about information sources is especially important, but that aside if you can see a goal coming or a penalty being given, resulting in a power play, then you can pre-empt the market and trade yourself some profit.

Other important points/tips

Some key things to remember:

Schedule:

Make sure you have a look at the fixtures to see whether or not one of the teams is playing consecutive nights, how far they've been travelling, time zone issues, etc. Sometimes teams play two or more long road trips back-to-back and this should automatically make you wary of their chances.

All winning (and losing) streaks must come to an end:

Although this is true of any sport, it is especially true of ice hockey. Form tends to be much more erratic in the NHL, even amongst the top-placed teams. With so many games in a season, it is understandable that teams can't be at their best every night. If you think one team has better players and, therefore, a better chance of winning than the other, do not necessarily let the form book put you off. It is often attractive to back the teams whose prices are higher than they should be on account of bad form.

The clock stops when the puck is not in play:

This is a simple but enormously important point to remember. Unlike in soccer, for example, when the clock keeps going when there is a break in play, the clock in ice hockey is stopped. Thankfully this is easy to get your head round just by watching the clock on the TV, but it might take you a few games to get used to.

Useful links

Here you can find some links to useful resources which could help you with your betting on ice hockey.

www.nhl.com the best site for news, results, fixtures, rules and generally everything you could need to keep in touch with goings-on in the NHL

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/nhl/index

http://www.eurohockey.net/ worth visiting if you are betting on European leagues. Not a pretty site but has good information and links to the sites for each national leagueLer mais