covers.com | Illegal Curve Hockey

Read an excerpt from Ari's weekly Covers.com contribution: Pucking the Trends: NHL Betting News & Notes. Parity and the Puckline So, how have those puckline bets been going? Through Sunday, 34 of the first 63 games (54 percent) of the NHL campaign have been one-goal games, creating lopsided results for bettors playing the puckline. According to Buffalo Sabres Coach Lindy Ruff, "this league (the NHL) is so tight, it's so close, that you can get outshot badly and you can still win a game…but there's not much that separates one team from another now." The Buffalo News', John Vogl suggests that the salary-cap system implemented by the NHL is creating parity. He points to the 2008-2009 season as evidence, where only seven points separated sixth from 12th place in the Western Conference and eight points divided fourth from 10th in the East. Click here to read the entire article on Covers.com Covers.com receives over 45 Million visits a year, and curates the recommend list of websites as the #1 Sports Betting Industry site according to Hitwise.