Author's note: I have served on the Patty Kazmaier selection committee in the past, but did not this year. I was not privy to any conversations or voting. All opinions here are my own.
An award of The USA Hockey Foundation, the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award was established in 1998 and is presented annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey. This year's award will be handed out on Saturday, March 22 as part of the Women's Frozen Four weekend.
Wisconsin teammates Laila Edwards, Caroline Harvey and Casey O’Brien have been named the 2025 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award Top-Three Finalists. It is just the second time in the award's history that all three finalists play for the same team.
With a combination of speed, size, skill and shot, Laila Edwards might be one of one. There just isn't quite another player in women's hockey like her. When she is playing her very best, she's smooth with the puck, finding open ice in front of the net, picking her shot to hit with either an effortless looking wrister or a killer slapshot.
She's one off the national lead for goals scored with 30, tied for second in points with 65 and was named first-team All-WCHA. She's a forward who played time at defense for her team as injuries left them short of blue liners and the team nor her stats suffered for the move.
A move to defense with Team USA made her more versatile for the Badgers, but also changed how she approached playing as a forward. She sees the ice even better than she did before and is more cognizant of how offensive plays start with strong defense. She's a more complete player now, blocking shots and getting involved in plays that lead to breakouts. Instead of just letting linemates, Casey O'Brien and Kirsten Simms take off in transition, she's part of the play. Her long stride and some years as a child as a figure skater help her with speed and finesse will skating.
Her versatility and how well she plays with her linemates ensures that Wisconsin's top line is greater than the sum of its parts. Edwards' adaptability makes her a good foil for O'Brien and Simms, but she also has her own stick-handling skills and moves. That any one of the players on that line can deke a defender, find open ice, thread a pass or snipe a shot makes it fully lethal. And with her linemates' smaller stature, Edwards adds the ability to screen the goalie, win pucks along the boards and claim a piece of ice as her own.
Despite sharing time with those two gifted goal scorers and often having a propensity to lay off the puck, Edwards has still made a massive mark putting the puck in the net. She's often the tallest player on the ice, but she's still able to make defenses lose track of her. Yes, she gets good feeds from her linemates, but she's also in the right place or finding open ice this season way more frequently and successfully than she has in previous seasons.
The Patty Kaz is about the player that had the best singular season, so I'm trying to focus on this year. But I've written several profiles of Laila Edwards over the past few years and have been lucky enough to see her at the U18 IIHF World Championship in the summer of 2022, the senior World Championship in Utica and through three years at Wisconsin.
One thing with two sides sticks out for me with Laila. There are still plenty of times where she's still not playing at 100%. Obviously that bit is not necessarily a positive. But that means she's one of the best scorers in the country without playing at her ceiling. There is still room for her to get better. And at just 21, no one would expect her to be perfect.
That she's shown such tremendous growth as a player, as a leader and as a person in the few years since she burst on the scene at those U18 Worlds is what makes her so compelling. Her first season in Madison was marked by some timidity and a lack of confidence. Fully believing in what she's capable of might be a lifetime fight, but this year there has been a carefree and easy feel to her game. The cohesion with her teammates (and not just her linemates because under Mark Johnson a line sheet is more suggestion than mandate) has made her unafraid to fail. The Badgers fully trust in each other and there's a belief that if a shot is missed or a mistake is made, someone else on the team will be in the correct position to clean it up or fix it.
Laila Edwards could win the Patty Kazmaier Award because she has helped redefine what a forward can look like. She defies stereotypes in how she finds and secures space on the ice while skating and puck-handling with finesse.
(Photo: UW Athletics)
