March 10, 2002 - An important upset in the WSHL quarter-finals changes the seedings for the sem-finals. In what would have to be considered a significant upset, the sixth place San Diego Surf beat the third place Bay City Bombers 2-0 to advance to the WSHL semi-finals. The Surf beat the Bombers 3-2 in overtime on Friday night, then won by a solid 6-2 count on Saturday to re-shuffle the seedings for the next playoff round. 

The fourth place Valencia Flyers ended the 5th place Salt Lake Maple Leafs season by sweeping the Leafs 9-3 and 5-0. In the final series, the second place Utah Valley Golden Eagles had their way with the seventh place Nevada Rattlers winning 10-4 and 14-5.

The San Diego upset means the Surf will go to Phoenix to play the Polar Bears in the Semi-finals while the Valencia Flyers will take on the Utah Valley Golden Eagles in Provo, Utah. Both series will be played the weekend of March 15-17 and will be best two out of three affairs. Had Bay City prevailed versus San Diego, Valencia would have traveled to Phoenix and the Bombers would have gone to Utah. So the upset victory had a substantial effect on the playoff seedings. The semi-finals promise to provide some exciting hockey as the season winds down to its conclusion.

March 3, 2002 - The WSHL season came to an end in an intriguing fashion. Phoenix Polar Bears completed their undefeated season with an untainted 76 points, by sweeping the Bay City Bombers in a 3 game series. The Utah Valley Golden Eagles finished a solid second, with a record of 27 Wins 10 Losses and 1 shoot-out loss for 55 points. Then the intriguing part. The positions 3-5 were separated by a single point. Bay City Bombers earned the third position with 36 points, who required the tie-breaking formula to beat the fourth place Valencia Flyers, who also had 36 points.  In fifth place was Salt Lake Maple Leafs, with 35 points. San Diego Surf finished the season very strongly and ended up in sixth place with 27 points while Nevada Rattlers had 11 points. 

The final seedings came down to the final weekend of play. All teams in the 4th to 6th positions, had the opportunity to move up or down based on the last series. As it turns out, the Maple Leafs swept Nevada Rattlers to stay ahead of San Diego Surf. Valencia took both games it played against San Diego to move past the Maple Leafs into fourth place and narrowly miss-out on the third place seeding for the playoffs. Bay City held on to third place despite being swept by Phoenix.

Thank you to all Owners, Coaches, Players and Parents, who combined to make the 2001/2002 WSHL Season one of the most competitive and exciting in the league’s history. Good luck to all teams in the playoffs.
 

The official WSHL league standings are as follows: