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How to Bet on Hockey
by Jim Campbell of Footballforecastor.com

The most recent changes brought about in the hockey world centered around the NHL lock-out of the 2004-2005 season, the end result was a season without hockey and a flurry of new rules, most of the new rules were created and designed to bring more excitement to the game of hockey, however, these same rule changes also affected the way a gambler now wagers on hockey with regard to the elimination of ties and the new shootout format to decide games which of course put an end to games ending in a tie and brought about the introduction of the “money-line” to hockey.

Wagering on the “money-line” and/or on pitchers is nothing new to those familiar to wagering on baseball, these new rules mentioned above make hockey wagering almost identical to baseball wagering in that the best route to take is simply betting a team to win or lose, the difference is that in baseball you must know your pitchers but in hockey you must know your goalies, in my humble opinion the best way to wager on hockey is by concentrating on spread doggies or slight favorites, think about it a moment if you will my friend, if you were to concentrate the bulk of your wagers on the doggies and make these same wagers on the “money-line”, then all you have to do is simply break even in the win/loss column to produce a profit, following is a list of key factors to look for when making a hockey wager:

1. The most important consideration is to know who is playing goalie for the two teams involved in any given contest, the reason being is due to the fact that a goalie is the single most important player on the ice and his performance will directly translate to the success of any given team on any given night. Keep up on starting line-ups and monitor the injury reports of each team playing on a particular day, often a situation will arise in which a back-up goalie gets the start.
2. Have a team by team schedule for the season on hand and realize in advance any and all scheduling situations that can and will impact any given teams performance, keep in mind that teams playing consecutive games on the have a tough row to hoe when facing rested home teams, quite often visiting teams do not arrive to the host city until early the next morning because they finished up a night game and then had to travel. In this scenario the visiting coach usually does not schedule a practice in order to keep the legs of his team fresh.
3. Hockey is similar to football in two key ways, first of all both games are very physical in nature, and secondly the adage that defense wins championships holds true in both sports. In hockey like football, there exists two type of teams, some teams play a style that is predicated on intimidating physical play featured by hard hitting while other teams play more of a finesse style of play predicated on timing, when two teams with these contrasting styles play usually the team with the more physical defense wins.

Our goal here at www.footballforecastor.com is to hit the 60% win mark year in and year out with our NFL and college football selections, in the big picture few handicappers are able to achieve this lofty goal on a consistent basis. I shake my head in wonderment on how they get away with such outrageous claims when I see the Saturday morning scam-you-cappers on TV or in the advertisements listed in the USA Today newspaper touting win percentages of 75% or 80% over the course of a season.

The simple truth is that only the very best handicappers consistently produce seasonal results that fall within the 55% to 60% range much like we do here at footballforecastor.com year in and year out, my advise to all clients is to use extreme discipline in the amount of games you wager on each week, you must also adhere to good money management techniques in order to get through the peaks and valleys of a long season.

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