There is a working hockey betting community, unlike basketball and college football. The catch is that it only exists for about seven months a year.
Hockey bettors get a better deal on Reddit than NBA or college bettors do, which is not something you can say about many things in the betting world. r/NHLbetting has 10,018 members and it is genuinely alive.
It is also completely seasonal. When we checked on 17 August 2026 the newest post was from 20 July. That is not a dying community, it is a community that goes to sleep in June and wakes up in October, and if you find it in summer you will reasonably conclude it is dead.
r/NHLbetting is live. r/NHLbets was banned by Reddit. Hockey has the same problem NFL does, where the two obvious names differ slightly and only one works.
Where hockey betting talk happens
| Community | Members | When it is busy | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| r/sportsbook | 616,065 | All year, hockey in season | Volume. Hockey lives inside the daily threads rather than getting its own. |
| r/sportsbetting | 580,826 | All year | Posting your own thread about a specific game or number. |
| r/NHLbetting | 10,018 | October to June | Hockey-only conversation with people who watch hockey. |
| r/NHLbets | – | Banned | Nothing. Wrong name. |
One thing worth understanding about hockey specifically: r/sportsbook does not run a dedicated daily NHL thread the way it does for baseball and football. Hockey action goes into Pick of the Day, Parlay of the Day and the general daily picks thread alongside everything else. Our guide to the daily thread system covers which is which.
Why the hockey community is small
Ten thousand members is modest for a major North American league, and the reason is partly structural. Hockey is a low-scoring sport where the moneyline does most of the work, the puck line is fixed at 1.5 rather than moving like a football spread, and the totals market is narrow. There is simply less to argue about per game than there is in a baseball props thread carrying seven hundred comments.
It also means limits are lower. In our own testing, hockey sat below NFL, NBA and MLB in the limit hierarchy at every book we looked at, while still being better supported than niche markets. Our Bookmaker review breaks down that limit profile sport by sport.
If you are reading this in summer
Wait. The community fills up again from the start of October, and the most useful window is actually late September, when season futures and division win totals go up and the market has not settled yet. That is also when line shopping pays most, because books open those markets at noticeably different numbers.
Our sportsbook rankings cover which books post futures early and price hockey competitively.
Questions people ask
What is the NHL betting subreddit?
r/NHLbetting, with 10,018 members. The similarly named r/NHLbets was banned by Reddit. r/NHLbetting is seasonal, with real activity from October through June and very little over the summer.
Is r/NHLbetting dead?
No, it is seasonal. Checking in July or August will show a newest post several weeks old, which looks like abandonment but is just the off-season. Activity returns with the start of the NHL season in October.
Does r/sportsbook have a daily NHL thread?
Not a dedicated one. Unlike baseball and football, which get their own daily threads, hockey action goes into Pick of the Day, Parlay of the Day and the general daily picks thread alongside other sports.
Why are NHL betting limits lower than NFL or NBA?
Hockey attracts less liquidity than the bigger North American leagues, and the market structure offers fewer angles, with a fixed 1.5 puck line and a narrow totals range. In our testing, hockey consistently sat below NFL, NBA and MLB in the limit hierarchy while still ranking above niche markets.
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