SANTA CLARA — After being overwhelmed by an unexpected flood of transit riders going to the Sharks game at Levi’s Stadium last weekend, VTA is already planning upgrades it hopes will quicken trips for mega-sized events such as the Super Bowl and WrestleMania. But smoothing out the transit bumps may prove more difficult for special events than it was for 49ers games.

The Sharks’ outdoor matchup with the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night was the first time the 49ers new Santa Clara home had featured expanded seating, and a record 16,000 attendees took transit — twice the normal Levi’s Stadium total for Niners games. The result? Some fans missed part of the pre-game festivities as packed trains passed them on the way to the game. The postgame trip was even worse: It took hordes of hockey buffs as much as two hours to get home on light rail even as drivers zoomed quickly onto the freeway.

“After doing BART for years for events at Oakland (Coliseum), we were just amazed at how bad it was,” said Beverly Catanzano of Fremont, a Sharks season ticket holder who made her first trip to Levi’s Stadium on Saturday. “It was a complete chaotic disaster.”

Hoping to get postgame waits back down to an hour at most, as it was during the 49ers season, VTA will likely add new buses to be on standby to carry riders along the light rail routes. Still, that costs extra taxpayer money for service that might ultimately not be needed, and each bus can only carry one-tenth the load of each three-car light rail train.

The NHL game was a reversal from the 49ers season, with football fans used to gridlocked postgame vehicle traffic and generally smooth Valley Transportation Authority light rail service, which improved during the season after some early hiccups.

But while 49ers games often feature regulars who stick to the same travel patterns — usually, drivers who tailgate beforehand — special events typically attract people going to the stadium for the first time, and their commute choices are tough to predict. That presents a challenge for the upcoming offseason of concerts and other special events, including WWE’s WrestleMania on March 29 — the next time seating will be expanded beyond 70,000 — and Super Bowl 50 in February 2016.

VTA officials say they were completely surprised by the larger crowds for the Sharks game, and that it will be difficult to make huge improvements because it has already maxed-out light rail service.

But the agency wants to start selling light-rail passes as part of a package at the same time attendees are buying their event tickets so it can better predict transit crowds. Now, many special event-goers show up at the station and buy their passes there, leaving VTA largely unaware of how many people will show up to ride.

They also are going to work with event promoters to get the word out about how to use VTA so thousands of largely newbie riders don’t exit the wrong stadium gate or get in the wrong train line, worsening wait times. Sharks fans say there were plenty of ads about taking transit leading up to the game but little specifics given on how.

“We want a second chance,” VTA spokeswoman Brandi Childress said.

At the NHL game, many riders’ frustration over the long wait times — not to mention the Sharks’ 2-1 loss — was compounded by the perception that the giant postgame crowd had lumped into a free-for-all, instead of orderly queues.

“For people who were there for the first time it was hard to figure out exactly where to go,” said Michael Mathews, a Sharks season ticket holder from San Francisco who got a hotel in downtown San Jose for the night because he was worried about the slow trip home. But it took him 2 hours, 15 minutes on light rail to reach the hotel after the game. “I’m not sure it saved any time at all,” he added with a laugh.

While there were lessons learned from the Sharks game, Childress cautioned that each new event will be different. The Sharks crowd was predominantly from the South Bay, and many fans wanted to arrive extra early for a pre-game fan fest, whereas WrestleMania and Super Bowl attendees will come from around the world and many have likely never heard of VTA. Many of the hotel blocks for Super Bowl visitors will be in San Francisco, while there could be bus-specific highway lanes before the big game to ease train crowding.

“If I were going to the Super Bowl, I would find a different way of getting there,” said Daniel Palay, who spent two hours waiting for and riding light rail to his San Jose home after the Sharks game. “They have a lot to learn.”

Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705. Follow him at Twitter.com/RosenbergMerc.