Four formats cover most of what a Canadian sportsbook offers: moneyline, spread, totals, and parlays. Each balances risk, payout math, and settlement rules differently, so picking the right one for a given matchup actually matters. The baseline is the
moneyline — pick the outright winner, nothing more complicated.
Point spreads (run lines in baseball, puck lines in hockey) assign a handicap to level out mismatched teams. Backing an NHL favourite on a -1.5 puck line means that team needs to win by two goals or more to cash the ticket.
Totals (over/under) skip picking a side entirely and focus on combined scoring instead. Bookmakers set a benchmark — 5.5 goals in hockey, 47.5 points in football — and price the odds of the final number landing over or under it. Bettors chasing bigger payouts often stack these straight picks into
parlays, where every leg must win and risk compounds with potential profit.
Beyond the four core formats,
proposition bets (props) zero in on micro-events inside a game — a skater's shots on goal, a quarterback's passing yards, a team hitting a specific milestone. Plenty of these update live through
in-play markets as momentum shifts mid-game.
Futures sit at the other end of the timeline entirely, locking in season-long odds on a Stanley Cup winner or division title months before anything settles.
Knowing which of these bet types fits a specific angle — a mismatch, a defensive slugfest, a player on a hot streak — beats defaulting to the same format every single week.