by Joe Lami

SANTA CLARA–The preparations are officially underway for this Saturday’s NHL Stadium Series and ice conditions should be okay the South Bay is expected to get a little more of a heat wave this weekend similar to this past weekend. It looks all good and the ice will soon be installed at Levi’s Stadium and they announced a sell out at 70,000 are expected to be in attendance.

The second hand ticket market is going nuts for this game now that it is officially sold out and the Sharks added more additionally tickets and Levis Stadium is going to try to see how the expansion of this stadium works out as they will get a preview of the capacity size of the stadium when the Super Bowl is played there next February.

The NHL Stadium Series should be a good one, it’s going to be an important one the two teams are pretty much next to each other in the standings between the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings. However the Sharks lost on Tuesday night to the Nashville Predators 5-1. The Sharks are starting to lose ground in the playoff hunt.

If you look towards the standings as of Tuesday evening the Sharks still stand fourth in the Pacific with 66 points and have only played 59 games. L.A. is just a few points back but the Kings have three games in hand and for L.A. those three games are going to be huge. The Kings won on Monday night against the Tampa Bay Lighting at Staples Center 3-2.

This was after Tampa had absolutely killed the Sharks in San Jose on Sunday night 4-1, the Kings have only one game before the Stadium Series against Colorado on Wednesday evening. The Avalanche are a struggling team with 59 points with 57 games played, they sit sixth in the wild card standings with seven points back from San Jose in the Pacific.

Colorado is not out of it yet it’s not looking good for them as L.A. has won the last two and they will capitalize and put a lot of pressure on San Jose. San Jose is in the midst of a two game road trip with Dallas on tap on Thursday night before they come to face L.A. at Levis Stadium on Saturday night. That Stadium Series game is going to have a lot of hype behind it because of the playoff hunt and it’s not looking good for San Jose if L.A. wins they will officially have more points than San Jose.

Joe Lami is filling for Amaury Pi Gonzalez this week. Joe also talks about the Stanford Cardinal Women’s basketball team join him on the podcast below