A hockey game is three periods of twenty minutes, and the sixty they add up to is called regulation time. Level at the end of it, the teams play overtime. If overtime settles nothing, a shootout does: skaters go one at a time against the goaltender until one team has scored and the other has not.
Both halves of that matter to a bet. Some markets count overtime and the shootout, and some stop dead on the sixty minutes. The NHL, the KHL, the Champions Hockey League and the DEL carry cards here, and the wider ice hockey list runs well past those four, priced before the puck drops and while the game is on.
The competitions
All four leagues on the cards open in the autumn and play through the winter, which sounds like the natural order for a sport on ice until you notice the NHL playoffs still going in June. The quiet stretch is short. The playoffs come in two shapes, and which shape a competition uses decides what one bad night costs.
- NHL. The North American league is the one the others get measured against. The regular season runs from October into April, and the Stanley Cup playoffs take the survivors through to June. Every round is a best-of-seven series, a run of games between the same two teams where the first to four wins goes through.
- KHL. The leading league across Russia and its neighbours runs a calendar a month ahead of the NHL's at both ends: September to March for the regular season, then the Gagarin Cup playoffs from late March into May.
- Champions Hockey League. The pan-European club competition is the short one. A round-robin group stage opens in September, the knockout rounds run through the winter, and the final is played in February. Those knockout rounds are single-elimination, so one bad night ends a season a best-of-seven would have absorbed.
- DEL. Germany's top league runs from September into April, then decides the title over best-of-seven series like the NHL's. The clubs at the top of the table go straight into them, and the ones below have a pre-playoff round to get out of first.
The markets
Match winner
Match winner is the plain winner market, and it waits. Overtime and the shootout both count towards it, so a side that has not led for a second of regulation can still come out the right side of the bet.
A shootout is worth one goal, however many rounds it takes.
Regulation time
The three-way market stops at the end of the third period and prices the score as it stands there: home win, away win, or the two level. Level is a selection of its own, even though the game will carry on and find a winner.
Double chance in regulation time covers two of those three outcomes in one bet.
The puck line
The puck line is a goals handicap, and it is read on regulation time alone. One team's goals are adjusted by the line before the two scores are compared, so a favourite giving a goal and a half has to win by two. A whole-number line can finish level, and then the stake comes back.
Total goals
Add both teams' goals together and take the pair over or under a line. The rules file this one with the markets that stop at the end of regulation, so a goal in overtime arrives too late to count towards it.
Goaltending decides more of these than the forwards do.
Periods
Period betting takes one named period on its own: the first, the second or the third, won by whichever side scores more in those twenty minutes, with level a result as well. The period has to be completed for the bet to stand, unless what happened in it had already settled the answer.
Outrights
An outright is a bet on a whole season or tournament rather than one game, so a trophy price struck in autumn sits open until the summer.
They are hard to void. A club moving city or changing its name does not touch the bet, and neither does a change to the length of the season.
Which markets count the shootout and which stop on sixty minutes is written out one by one in the ice hockey section of the Sports Betting Rules, and it opens with a rule about the game itself: a match has to begin on its scheduled date, in the rink's local time, for bets to stand.
In-play
The game is priced while it runs, and the match markets are re-cut every time a goal goes in. Odds shown outside the sportsbook were true when somebody took them, and hockey does not hold still for long.
A power play is the clearest thing that happens to a price. A penalised player sits out for two minutes and their side plays a skater short, which is the best chance of a goal the other team will get. The number moves when the penalty is called, not when the puck goes in.
Late in the third period a losing team pulls its goaltender off the ice and sends an extra skater on instead, which leaves the net empty. It is a trade — a better chance of levelling the game against the easiest goal the leading side will score all night, and the price moves on both.
What to look at before you bet
- Who is in net. A goaltender in form can hold a weaker side inside a total on their own, which is more than any forward manages. Find out who is starting, and whether it is the same one who played the last game.
- The second night in two. Upsets in a long season come from a team playing its second game in two nights, or landing off a flight across several time zones. The fixture list says this and the form table does not.
- Home ice. Across a league season the home side wins more often than it loses, which is worth something. In a single knockout tie it is worth much less, because the visitors only have to be right once.
- Special teams. The power play is one half of it, and the penalty kill, the spell a side spends a skater short, is the other. How a team does at both describes a tight, penalty-heavy game better than its goals-for column, because so many hockey goals are scored with a man advantage.
- The shape of the round. A best-of-seven series absorbs a bad night, since a team has to lose four games before it goes out. A single-elimination round absorbs nothing, and the Champions Hockey League plays its knockouts that way.
The ice hockey quick guide
- Check which clock the market uses. Sixty minutes, or sixty plus whatever it takes after that.
- Find out who is in net. The starting goaltender is the one name that rewrites a total.
- Read the fixture list. A second game in two nights shows up in the third period.
- Know what you're backing. A read on who wins sits on match winner, a read on the margin sits on the puck line.
- Stay with it after the goaltender leaves. The last two minutes against an empty net settle totals that looked finished.
Open the NHL, the KHL, the Champions Hockey League or the DEL from the cards, and take the ice hockey section of the Sports Betting Rules with you, because that is where each market says whether it counts the shootout.
