The narrowest quality gap in North American sport
The distance between the best and worst NHL team is smaller than in any other league here, which is why hockey moneylines rarely go past around −250.
A salary cap, a low-scoring sport and goaltending variance compress outcomes. One hot goalie erases a large talent difference over sixty minutes in a way no single player can in basketball.
Over a season the good teams do separate clearly. The compression is a property of single games rather than of team quality.
That is also the expensive part. It makes hockey the hardest sport on this board to hold a strong opinion about at a price worth taking, because the price is rarely wrong by much.
What to do with it. Expect small edges in hockey and size accordingly, rather than looking for the mispricings that exist in thinner markets.
The archive
What the published price did in the NHL
1,280 games in the NHL that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between November 26, 2025 and November 6, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 712 | 1,251 | 56.9% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 451 | 1,277 | 35.3% |
| The total went over | 652 | 1,277 | 51.1% |
| The home side won | 670 | 1,280 | 52.3% |
- Points in a game, on average
- 6.29
- Winning margin, on average
- 2.25
How wide the games were
Over 1,825 finished games in the NHL with a score — a margin needs no price, so this sample is wider than the one above.
- Half were decided by this or less
- 2
- One in ten by this or more
- 4
- The widest
- 10
How they ended
Over 1,824 finished games in the NHL whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 445 | 1,824 | 24.4% |
| Settled on a shootout | 154 | 1,824 | 8.4% |
1 game landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so it is in the count it is out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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