Moneyline ... puck line ... it’s almost time!
With the NHL season on the way, VSiN’s analyst looks at some nuances in the two most popular ways to bet a hockey game.
MONEYLINE
The moneyline involves betting on a team to win a game straight up. Overtime and shootouts are included, unless stated otherwise. Typically there’s a favorite and an underdog, but sometimes a game is deemed too close to call.
The moneyline is where a lot of hockey bettors start to travel down the path of trying to pick winners, and that’s a fool’s errand. If the goal were simply to pick the winner, I would tell you to pick the favorite because you would be right more often than not. The goal is to estimate the odds better than the market. Sharp bettors understand this and make their own odds. Then they take their odds and look for discrepancies.
For example, let’s pretend the Vegas Golden Knights are -160 favorites over the San Jose Sharks, which translates to about a 60 percent chance after removing the vigorish. Now let’s imagine that one bettor estimates that the Golden Knights have a 65 percent chance (-185), while another bettor gives them a 55 percent chance (-120). Both bettors predict the Golden Knights will win.
However, the bettor who gave the Golden Knights a 55 percent chance will choose to bet on the Sharks at +140 (40 percent) in this scenario, because that bettor believes his chances of winning are closer to 45 percent or +120. Meanwhile, the other bettor opts to lay -160 (61.5 percent) on the favored Golden Knights because he believes they should be closer to -185 or 65 percent. Both bettors have the right idea. Both believe they have estimated the odds better than the market, and thinking
they have found value, they place their bets. Handicapping should be done before viewing sportsbook odds.
PUCK LINE
Like a point spread in basketball and football, the puck line is a fixed handicap, typically set at 1.5 goals.
When laying the favorite, puck-line prices can look pretty appetizing to the novice bettor. But remember, the odds represent the underlying probability of an event happening, and the likelihood of winning by two or more goals (about 35 percent on average) is lower than simply winning the game.
Of course, the other 65 percent of the time, the score will be within one. That’s why you’ll often have to pay a price upward of -185 when taking an underdog on the puck line.
A common mistake novice bettors make is electing to take a moneyline favorite on the puck line in an effort to avoid laying chalk. For example, maybe a bettor really wants to bet on a team to win a particular game, but when he gets to the sportsbook, he sees the team is listed as a -200 favorite, and he doesn’t want to risk $200 to win $100.
However, instead of passing on the game, he decides to bet on that team to cover the puck line (-1.5) at +130 odds. This is a mistake because assuming there’s no error in how the probability of the event occurring — in this case a team winning by two or more goals — was estimated, laying -200 on the moneyline and +130 on the puck line are virtually the same bets.
A good rule of thumb is that if you don’t believe there is value in a market like the moneyline, assume there is no value in any of the markets derived from it.
Andy MacNeil analyzes hockey for VSiN.com. VSiN programming can be heard on iHeartRadio platforms.