Until last year, sports bettors in Canada couldn’t wager on a single sport legally, at least at local sportsbooks. If you wanted to bet on hockey, your only choice was to accumulate multiple bets—parlay betting.
Luckily, single sports betting is now legal in Canada. And NHL bettors couldn’t be happier. Discover more details below.
You can bet on a single NHL team
Let’s start with the obvious. The legalization of single-sports betting means you can bet on a single NHL game. No longer do you have to bet on parlays fully aware they reduce your chances of winning.
Instead, you can bet on single teams, more so games you can predict comfortably. Focusing on a single NHL game also reduces the amount of research required to make a hockey prediction.
Another benefit of single sports betting is that you can wager on multiple games separately. Let’s say there’s a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Calgary Flames. Then there’s another game between the Red Wings and the Canucks.
You can wager on Toronto’s game at your favorite betting site. Next, you can place a bet on Detroit’s game in a different sportsbook. There are many reasons you can bet on multiple games separately. Majorly, the benefit is to evade the risk of accumulating all bets.
More Canada-based betting websites
In the era of parlay betting in Canada, sports punters had two options. You could bet at a provincial sportsbook and adhere to parlays’ only betting rules. Or you could join an offshore betting website.
With single sports betting becoming legal in Canada, most provinces are creating laws to commercialize the industry. In other words, they want to license offshore sportsbooks to increase revenues.
We are talking about major online betting operators like the ones recommended by bestbettingsites.com. They could all soon have offices in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.
In the meantime, these betting sites operated from their offshore offices. It doesn’t mean they’re unsafe, though. In fact, they hold valid licenses, secure their sites and work with trustworthy banking operators.
A wider variety of bet types
Banning single-event betting didn’t just prevent you from picking the winner of one NHL game. It also prohibited you from predicting other popular bet types like totals, point spreads and props.
Legal single-event betting means you don’t even need to predict which team will win Stanley Cup. Instead, you can focus on the total number of points scored in the game. Or you can have fun trying to predict whether Machine Gun Kelly will shout out his fiancée Megan Fox while performing at the NHL All-Star game.
To be clear, many single-event bet types are easier to predict than parlay bets. Think of totals. You can analyze two teams to gauge the quality of their forwards and defencemen.
Then you can look at recent match records to predict the average number of points scored in a game. Proposition bets are a tad more challenging to predict, though. But if you’re correct, you can win a small fortune.
More free bets and bonuses
When you think about it, bookmakers seldom give out bonuses for parlay betting. It’s a huge risk. However, betting sites will easily grant you a free bet to wager on one hockey game.
In other words, Canadians can expect more hockey bonuses now that single-sports betting is legal. Let’s start with welcome rewards. Betting operators use welcome free bets to attract new customers.
They can give you a free bet for signing up an account with them. The only catch is that you can’t withdraw your winnings until fulfill a set of wager requirements. All the same, look out for welcome bonuses.
At the best casinos, freebies don’t stop after your first deposit. They award loyal customers regular bonuses for adding funds to their accounts. You can also earn a bonus booster, cash backs and VIP treatment.
Could popularize betting in Canada
Let’s face it. Parlay betting is challenging even for an expert. If you’re beginner, it’s even worse. You don’t have the skills and experience required to predict multiple hockey games correctly.
However, single-sport betting is relatively simple. All you need is to check the tables and power rankings. Divisional leaders will often defeat bottom-placed teams. Likewise, a team in great form is likely to keep performing well.
Many Canadians with the intention of betting in sports can develop it into a habit as long they can bet on single teams. You don’t really need to be experienced to bet on the NHL sometimes.
The main requirement is a little bit of research. If you’re a hockey fan, research might not even be necessary. You watch the games regularly, so you know which teams are good and which ones are terrible.
Improved odds
Canadian hockey bettors have plenty of betting choices in this age of legal single event betting. They no longer have to stick with the official betting website in their province.
Once commercial betting becomes a thing, odds for single NHL games will improve drastically. Each sportsbook will want to maximize its customer base. And this will only happen by providing competitive odds for every game.
Now, it’s nearly impossible to find one bookmaker with the best hockey odds every time. As a result, some people join multiple bet types and use them to compare odds.
Better safety and transparency
Although a lot of offshore betting websites are safe, there are always scams on the Internet. Legal single sports betting could eliminate this problem in Canada. You don’t need to take a risk on an overseas betting site if there are plenty of sportsbooks locally.
Of course, Canadian provinces are yet to launch commercial betting sites. But once this happens, NHL punters will have a wide range of safe betting sites. By law, the companies will be required to be transparent.
Importantly, the industry will be competitive. This will force licensed betting sites to provide high quality services or lose customers to their competitors.
