Legally Betting On The Rangers
The New York Rangers are more than just one of the three National Hockey League teams that calls the Big Apple metro area home: they’re one on of the most enduringly successful and popular franchises in the history of professional hockey. With a proud lineage stretching back almost all the way to the beginning of the NHL and a legacy of almost continuous, uninterrupted achievement on the ice, it’s really no wonder that legally betting on the Rangers is a topic of intense interest among fans. However, until very recently it was impossible for New York residents to find a legal platform outside of Las Vegas for wagering on the Rangers, being that the practice was more or less banned by federal anti-gambling law throughout most of the country.
All that has changed now in the age of the internet, when new vistas of possibility have opened up like never before when it comes to legal betting opportunities. The emergence of foreign-based sportsbooks New York residents can access legally has made it possible for fans of the Rangers and other top-tier hockey teams to place bets on their favorite squads and players. The long-awaited availability of legal sports betting for Empire State hockey aficionados is due to the absence of any mention of internet gambling in the state’s legal roles related to wagering. That loophole or gray area has the effect of making sites based in Europe and the Caribbean – like our top recommendations in the ultra-competitive segment, SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes – the best bet for New York bettors.
Though the prospect of legally betting on the Rangers after so many years of being denied it is exciting on multiple levels, it’s important to understand exactly how to go about placing your bets before you dive off into the deep end. There is no doubt that a lot of misinformation is floating around online about how to use legal offshore sports betting sites (and some misguided folks actually believe it’s illegal to do so, as if using an overseas-based sportsbook was a black market work-around. That’s where our comprehensive guide comes in: we aim to give the prospective sports bettor, newbies to the hobby or even returning veteran punters the knowledge and information you need to get started using offshore sports betting shops and, hopefully, start cashing out winning tickets.
There are several factors that go into making New York one of the most popular teams to wager on in the entire NHL, but it primarily comes down to the team’s historical significance and continued relevance. That history goes back a long way indeed, as the Rangers joined the NHL in 1926 as one of the league’s first expansion teams – forming a key component of what came to be known as “the Original Six,” the core franchises that competed for the vaunted Stanley Cup until 1967. New York became the first NHL team based in the United States to win the legendary Stanley Cup (and the Rangers did this feat in their first year of play upon entering the league) before going on to claim the championship several more times throughout the intervening years.
It is generally understood that you simply can’t ever count out the Rangers when you see them on the betting board, as even when New York isn’t literally the top team in the NHL, they’re still going to be a strong contender for a divisional title year in and year out. This kind of nigh-perennial success can’t be bought, but shrewd maneuvering by management to recruit or trade for some of the league’s best talent certainly doesn’t hurt the case that the Rangers aren’t a team to be trifled with even after a season in which they don’t claim the Stanley Cup or the President’s Cup.
These two primary reasons drive much of the interest in legally betting on the Rangers, which –as we’ve said – is possible for New York sports wagering fans only by way of offshore sportsbook websites like 5Dimes, BetOnline and SportsBetting. But just knowing that these industry-leading sites are going to follow New York’s fortunes closely and offer current betting odds on the Rangers throughout the season and into the post season is not enough to get started placing wagers. In the next few sections we’ll dig a little deeper into how to read the available betting lines offered by New York-friendly sportsbook sites like those we’ve mentioned and believe, after exhaustive research on the matter, to be the best on the net.
Betting On The Rangers Straight Up
The most basic way you can bet legally on the Rangers is to place a wager straight up – that is, you put your money on the hockey team you think will win in a given game, whether that’s the favorite (the team more likely to win) or the underdog (the team more likely to lose). Because betting straight up is based simply on whether the team you stake wins or loses, and because odds in the so-called American System are represented as indications of $100 units risked and won, this wager type is also called “betting the moneyline.”
Bookies (that’s the industry slang for the employees that calculate and list the odds on games) at legal New York sportsbooks like those we recommend for our readers list the odds like this: the favorite will have odds that pay out less in the event of a win in recognition of the fact that they are more likely to win, whereas the underdog will have more profitable odds in recognition of the greater risk incurred by the bettor. According to the rules of this system, the favorite will usually have odds beginning with a minus sign (-) while the favorite will have odds beginning with a plus sign (+) to show proportionately how much is needed to be wagered in order to win $100 or how much can be won by wagering $100.
Betting On The Rangers Point Spread
When you place a wager on the Rangers via the point spread method you will have to take into account not just victory and defeat in a given matchup, but also by how much your team – presumably that’s New York if you’re still reading this guide to legally betting on the Rangers – wins or loses. Point spread betting is the technical name for all wager forms in which the favorite must win by more than the amount of a handicap ceded to the underdog or the underdog must win outright or lose by a lesser amount than the handicap. However, in hockey it is also known as the “puck line” or – in recognition of the role played by the Great White North in the development of ice hockey – the “Canadian Line.”
The puck line is traditionally set at 1.5 goals, meaning a team has to win by 2 goals or more (or lose by less than two goals) in order for a bet on that team to constitute a winning wager. This form of betting sounds more complicated than it is in practice, so for a more thorough explanation of betting on the Rangers point spread, visit our page on how to read betting lines.
Betting On The Rangers Over/Under
Quite unlike the other two principal wager types we’ve already looked at, betting on the Rangers over/under does not – repeat does NOT – involve picking the winner at all. How this works becomes quite clear when one considers the alternate name for this wager type: betting on the points total. Though, technically speaking, goals (not points) are scored in hockey, this still holds true. Bettors place wagers upon whether the combined final score of both teams is greater than or less than (that’s where the over/under dichotomy comes in) the bookie’s anticipated amount.
What this looks like in practice is that the bookie names the expected total score and wagers are placed on whether the actual score goes over or under the listed amount – if you pick correctly you win the bet, simple as that. However, if the actual final combined score in the matchup matches what the bookies predicted it would be, then that’s called a “push,” and all the money that had been wagered on the over/under betting line will be refunded. If you still don’t quite get it, never fear! To read more on the subject of totals betting, head over to our Understanding Betting Odds page.
Of all the different wager types available at sportsbooks New York bettors can access legally online, prop bets are probably some of the most popular. That’s because Rangers fans are known and widely respected (or resented – but hey, that’s what it means to be New Yorkers) for fiercely supporting their team and following its exploits closely. Because New York fans are so knowledgeable about the players on the Rangers roster and the team as a whole, it makes picking winners using the prop bets method incredibly easy and even fun.
Prop bets take two different forms: player prop bets and team prop bets. Players props involve only the individual performances of solo players insofar as those performances or pieces of statistical data do not directly relate to the eventual final outcome of the game. Team prop bets are similar to player prop bets except they focus on the statistical performance of the entire team or portions of New York’s roster – but remember, this doesn’t mean the same thing as betting on the outcome of the game.
In the next few section we’ll go over several of the most common prop bets of each type so you’ll know what to do when you see them pop up on the betting board the next time you’re legally betting on the Rangers at sites like SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes. You will want to have a thorough understanding of the various wager types and how to place bets in general before you attempt to get in on the action when it comes to prop bets, so we recommend that you do your homework and educate yourself about how to read betting lines. Betting on sports does involve an element of risk, but managing and mitigating that risk through careful study will help you go a long way toward being a successful bettor beyond the short-term.
Rangers Player Prop Examples
Center Total Shots On Goal Vs. New Jersey Devils
- Over 3 Shots On Goal (-125)
- Under 3 Shots On Goal (-105)
Goalie Total Saves Vs. New Jersey Devils
- Over 28 Saves (-115)
- Under 28 Saves (-130)
Rangers Team Prop Examples
Margin Of Victory Vs. New York Islanders
- Rangers By 1 Goal (+600)
- Islanders By 1 Goal (+700)
- Rangers By 2 Goals (+800)
- Islanders By 2 Goals (+900)
- Rangers By 3 Or More Goals (+400)
- Islanders By 3 Or More Goals (+500)
Will The Rangers Win The President’s Trophy?
- Yes (+300)
- No (+400)
Though so far we have looked at quite a few ways you can legally wager on the Rangers, there are still a few different betting types we need to go over before we can move on to answering some of the most commonly answered questions about betting on the NHL in New York. All of these other ways to bet on the Rangers are available across the board at legal offshore sports betting sites like the ones we recommend for our readers, whether that’s 5Dimes, BetOnline or SportsBetting. The wide variety of wager types available at these leading betting shops is one of the reasons we simply can’t recommend them enough for anybody – whether you’re a New Yorker or not – who is interested in legally betting on the Rangers.
All the industry’s leading sportsbooks New Yorkers can trust offer sports betting apps that work with Android and Apple smartphone, for instance, but they also make new and innovative means of wagering available. The headliner of this latter type is live in-game betting, wherein the odds and even entire betting lines are subject to change in real time throughout the course of a game. Some of the less groundbreaking but more venerable betting types are futures bets (in which wagers are placed on far-off events like odds to win the Stanley Cup or a divisional championship, for instance). Specials (which are usually only listed occasionally, typically when there is a lot of outside interest on a game or something involving the team off the ice – like whether a fight will break out or who will be the next general manager and so on) are another popular option.
Is Sports Betting Legal For New York Residents?
We have more or less alluded to this throughout our guide to legally betting on the Rangers, but we should go ahead and clearly state it for the record: yes, betting on sports is legal for New York residents, though there are some caveats to that statement. First of all, there are indeed federal laws that broadly prohibit the practice of placing wagers on the NHL or any other professional or collegiate sport for that matter outside of a few designated states, and – regrettably – New York is not one of those. Secondly, the state of New York’s own laws prohibit most forms of gambling outside of the state lottery, pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing and whatever card and table games are allowed in the state’s tribal casinos.
The effect of this combination of federal and state gambling laws was that New Yorkers had no choice for years but to either head out to Las Vegas or to take their chances with a shady local bookie who was necessarily operating illegally. Not even domestically operated sports betting sites were exempt thanks to the latter-day reinterpretations of longstanding laws like the Federal Wire Act of 1961 and the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). The final nail on the coffin prior to the advent of legal offshore sports betting sites like BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), which prohibited financial institutions from processing gaming-related transactions made online.
Nevertheless, because New York state law doesn’t specifically include online gambling in the list of its prohibited wagering activities, and because the sites we recommend for our Empire State readers are based overseas (and are licensed and regulated by their own nation’s gaming authorities), they are able to avoid all prohibitions placed on other operators. Whether you want to think about this as a loophole, gray area or simply as an oversite on the part of Congress or New York lawmakers, the point is that the laws as they are written won’t stop you from legally betting on the Rangers.
Is Betting On The Rangers Unethical?
We have hopefully by now dispelled any notions you might have had that wagering on the NHL is illegal (provided you use sites like BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes), but there are perhaps more compelling arguments to be made that betting on the Rangers is unethical. We say “perhaps” because these arguments are ultimately made in bad faith now just as they were nearly 30 years ago with the passage of laws like the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). While other laws passed against sports betting targeted the practice’s allure for illegal activity and possibly had something to stand on, PASPA went after sports wagering because of something much more intangible: questions about the inherent morality of doing so.
The basic line of reasoning used by opponents of gambling on sports (and often of gambling generally) is that betting on sporting events provides too many incentives for unscrupulous athletes or their handlers to throw or fix a match, which practically invites organized crime to get involved. Even if the mob isn’t profiting off sports betting rackets, at the very least the public morals (especially of the youth) would be compromised, sending a bad message to practically everyone – at least that’s how the argument usually goes.
The problem with using scurrilous claims as the basis for an attack against sports betting is that they are simultaneously disingenuous and not made in good faith. Winning money by wagering on the Rangers or any other NHL team (or indeed any sports team) isn’t any more inherently unethical than paying athletes to play what amounts to a fun game devised over hundreds of years as a diversion and nothing more. Furthermore, betting on the Rangers at sites like those we recommend is bank-vault secure and there is virtually no chance of any untoward involvement from the criminal element, being that our top-rated sites are not even based in the country where NHL games take place.
Ultimately, whether or not you believe betting on sports is unethical, the facts are that it’s just about impossible for the practice as it’s carried out on sites like SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes to be corrupt or criminal or even dishonest. Wagering is basically a contract, and being paid for a day’s work is basically a gamble that an employer takes on his or her employee – so what’s the difference? Betting on sports and the legality – to say nothing of the morality of it - will likely remain a contentious issue for years to come, but in the end if you’re thinking about legally betting on the Rangers that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself.
Will New York Sportsbooks Keep My Financial Information Safe?
Though there’s some room for debate regarding the ethicality or, to a much lesser extent, if it’s really possible legally betting on the Rangers, one thing is absolutely clear: New York sportsbooks like BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes can be trusted to do everything in their power to keep your financial and personal information safe. This isn’t just because it’s a bunch of nice folks running these online betting shops based in the European Union and the Caribbean either. On the contrary, having features like multi-level encryption for every transaction, off-site data storage protocols whenever personal info crosses the server, and totally transparent record-keeping practices is all just part and parcel of the oversight from the gaming regulatory authorities in their home countries.
All that is to say that our top recommended sites are trustworthy and can be relied on to take care of their subscribers, members and users. They will pay out on time, they will process your deposits as quickly as possible, they will honor the wagers you place there and they are not going to fold up tomorrow and abscond with the money that by rights belongs to you. If concerns over security is what’s holding you back from trying your hand at placing wagers on the Rangers or you other favorite NHL teams, rest assured that you have nothing to worry about in that department if you decide to do so at our top-rated sports betting sites.
Can I Use My Smartphone To Bet On the Rangers?
One of the best reasons to use one of our most highly recommended legal offshore sports betting sites – those being BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes – is the degree to which they afford their members the convenience of wagering on the Rangers and all their favorite NHL teams no matter where they are, no matter the time of day, no matter what. This level of user-friendliness in the digital age is only possible via the use of especially developed mobile betting apps that enable users of our top-rated sportsbooks New York players can rely on to place wagers using their smart phones and other devices. The next time you’re out at the bar with your buddies or pulling overtime during game-time, download one of these apps and see for yourself just how easy it is to be anywhere, anytime.
These apps are essentially 1:1 replicas of the desktop versions of the sites that developed them except with the obvious refinements such as a layout that is optimized for viewing on a smartphone screen or tablet display, plus even faster loading time and smoother running overall operation. This is, of course, due to the wide availability of high-speed data streaming networks provided through the major cell phone service providers but also helped in large part by the care these leading mobile betting apps have baked in as the industry’s premier outlet for legally betting on the Rangers. Best of all for the prospective mobile sports betting app user is that these apps are available for free (via direct download from their respective sites) and have been designed from the outset to function flawlessly whether you’ve got a phone or tablet running on either the Android operating system or Apple’s iOS.
What Is The Best Deposit Method At New York Sportsbooks?
The arrival of Bitcoin on the scene really shook up the world of e-commerce, offering individuals an unprecedented opportunity for either wildly-profitable speculation or, at the very least, unrestricted access to world markets via the internet. However, it was the decentralized, unregulated nature inherent in this leader among so-called “cryptocurrencies” that was almost seized upon as a key advantage by the industry-leading legal offshore sports betting sites like SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes. These sites, though completely legal and regulated sports wagering platforms, were nevertheless unjustly suffering under the burden of unfair regulations imposed on their businesses by federal sports betting laws like the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), which prevented gambling related financial transactions over the internet from being processed.
Bitcoin changed all that by virtue of it being totally outside the control of any government or financial regulatory body anywhere in the world but simultaneously being immune from nearly any chance of influence from bad actors due to one key feature: the blockchain. This encrypted data string contains a record of all the transactions a particular Bitcoin was involved in from the moment it was “mined” through to every purchase in which it was used, and this data has to be verified across multiple servers, making it almost impossible for your Bitcoin to be hacked, rejected or misappropriated.
In recognition of Bitcoin’s role in the democratization of world markets online, the leading sites for legally betting on the Rangers offer not only the fastest possible deposits and payouts when using this method. As if that wasn’t enough of a reason to use Bitcoin when placing wagers on your favorite NHL teams, our highest-rated sites even go as far incentivize their users to adopt Bitcoin as the preferred deposit type, even offering bonuses of up to $5,000 in free wagers upon making a new deposit. There are some stipulations to bear in mind (such as rollovers and other qualifications), but all that is explained in greater detail on each site’s own FAQ section, so be sure to do your research before making a deposit using Bitcoin at New York sportsbooks.