Not so long ago, the NHL was in a serious identity crisis. The addition of a bunch of new teams which underlined the greed and the desire of owners to generate a few quick bucks led to a series of problems the league was forced to deal with.

First of all, a hockey team in a hot southern state will just not draw the kind of fans and followers it would up north. Secondly, the sheer number of teams in the NHL was starting to take a serious toll on the available talent-pool.

Under these conditions, the fact that NHL games were starting to turn boring didn’t really come as a surprise to anyone.

Many of these problems seem sorted out now, though, as the 2008 NHL season promises great excitement and countless hours of good handicapping to come.

The hidden value theory is as valid in the NHL as it is in the NFL. When betting on hockey, try to avoid wagering on the Favorite. While that team might be the one with the best chances to win, mathematically-speaking, betting on the fav is mostly a negative EV situation. If you bet them ATS, the bookie will make sure to have all value squeezed out of the lines before he gives them out. Any way you look at it, it’s a loss-loss situation. Popular games are also more likely to have the juice drained from them than unpopular ones.