Ontario man feels he was robbed of $1500 pay day after OLG gets him on a technicality

An Ontario man was in for a rude awakening after learning that the nearly $1,500 he thought he won betting on NHL games will not be paid out.

"I felt great, I was excited," Burlington resident Marc Nadal told CTV News Toronto last week. Nadal says he doesn't bet often and only bets small amounts, but he likes to pick the long odds to make things interesting. With that in mind, he played a $2 Proline bet that evening predicting that the Sharks vs Flyers, Panthers vs Hurricanes and Capitals vs Wild would all result in a tie after regulation. As his luck would have it, he won! All three games were tied after 60 minutes, leading him to believe that he had cashed in BIG time.

"I guess everyone is looking for the elusive three game tie, which is statistically pretty hard to get," he said. "I hit that and I was obviously pretty excited."

His payout should have been $1,458 but when he went to Ontario Lottery & Gaming  to cash in his ticket he was told that he was a non-winner. Apparently OLG guidelines are such that in order to qualify as a tie, the game must go 65 minutes of scoreless hockey meaning that it cannot be settled in overtime. Because two of the games were settled in 3 on 3 OT, Nadal was a loser. Nadal feels cheated, as the NHL doesn't consider OT in its definition of a tie. By the letter of the law from the league, a tie is a tie after 60 minutes... not 65 minutes.

"That's not really consistent to what a tie is in the rest of the world," said Nadal, adding the NHL considers a game a tie after regulation time and OLG should too.

"In the NHL, each participating team is awarded a point at the end of regulation time (because it’s a tie) and the additional five minutes is the tie breaker," said Nadal.

"It is based on regulation play plus the five-minute overtime period," a spokesperson told CTV News Toronto. "This means that a hockey game will result in both a tie (based on regulation play plus overtime, but not including a shootout) and a win (based on regulation play plus overtime plus shootout) only if the game goes to a shootout. If a game is settled prior to the shootout (including regulation time and the 5-minute overtime), no Tie result is recorded."

At this point it looks like Nadal has no recourse, but he can't help but feel like he was cheated and that the OLG should change its rules to reflect the NHL's moving forward. 

"To be honest I don't think I would be picking ties if I would have originally known this," said Nadal.