Made mine for the NBA, totals work best for me as well. I get around %58 on 300 games. I get %60 on about 100 games on ATS systems for the NBA. All of those results are backfitted on the last two seasons, but I have some confidence in them.
Just refitted the same programs for hockey. With identical algos (no optimization for old data), it's 26-15 and a few pushes so far this season.