Cornell senior forward Izzy Daniel has been chosen as the 2024 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award winner.
The honors were presented Saturday afternoon at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, NH as part of the women’s Frozen Four weekend hosted by the University of New Hampshire. The ceremony aired live on NHL Network. The award, which is in its 27th year, is presented annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s hockey by the USA Hockey Foundation.
Daniel is the first winner from Cornell University.
An award of the USA Hockey Foundation, the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award is annually presented to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey. Selection criteria includes outstanding individual and team skills, sportsmanship, performance in the clutch, personal character, competitiveness and a love of hockey. Consideration is also given to academic achievement and civic involvement.
Daniel was selected from a group of three finalists that included senior forward Casey O’Brien (Wisconsin) and sophomore forward Kirsten Simms (Wisconsin).
When her name was called, Daniel said she was surprised and in the immediate aftermath of her win, she was struggling to describe how she felt.
“I think I just like blacked out to be honest. I was so shocked. It’s just a tremendous honor to hear my name called and have it associated with Patty Kazmaier and her legacy and her family and USA Hockey and everyone. It’s a surreal experience. I really don’t have any words right now,” she said.
Daniel mentioned some of the great players – Olympic medal winners – that have come through Cornell’s women’s hockey program and said she knows she’s representing them by finally bringing a Patty back to Ithaca. A player who didn’t always have confidence in herself or her abilities, the win is validation and a culmination of a career working to be better.
“This is a combination of all the hard work that I put in throughout my career and to finally hear myself recognize, it is a shock but I’m kind of like, you know what? I did it and I should be believing in myself because I can do it. This is definitely another confidence boost heading into the rest of my career,” said Daniel.
Having spent previous years focusing on hockey skills and strength training, Daniel put special emphasis on the offseason before her senior year on the mental side of her game – on trusting herself and the work she’s put in, on being confident and on using the highs and lows of a long hockey season to her advantage.
The result was a season where she helped lead the Big Red to a 25-8-1 record and a NCAA Regional Final appearance.
Along the way she was named ECAC Hockey Player of the Year and Forward of the Year. She was third in the nation with 1.74 points per game and amassed 59 points on 21 goals and 38 assists, which led her conference.
Daniel was not widely recruited out of college and did not play on the USA U-18 team. She’s a Minnesota native who chose to go far away from home for college and Cornell coach Doug Derraugh said he’s watched her progress throughout the years to become the player that won this award this season.
“Not being a part of your national team at a young age, I think that makes you start wondering whether you’re at that level and but to her credit, Izzy used that as fuel to get better and to work at her craft and now she is where she is,” said Derraugh.
It’s inspiring and should be a lesson to younger players to keep working hard, he said, describing the work Daniels put in not just on the ice and in the weight room, but studying game film and learning the game.
“I think it’s a good testament to show that you know, maybe you don’t get everything you want when you’re young but if you keep working out you keep studying the game, learning, getting better doing all those things. You can be up on the stage and win,” he said.
Daniel has the second highest GPA on the team, is one of the least penalized players among the Big Red and has become a leader on and off the ice. Derraugh has said she epitomizes the Patty Kazmaier Award from the moment she was in the running.
Holding the trophy after her win, Daniel took a moment to read the names of previous winners that were engraved along the bottom. It reinforced for her how monumental and important her win was. She has looked up to previous winners for much of her career, including 2022 winner Taylor Heise, who she was teammates with growing up in Minnesota.
“To have my name on the trophy with those types of players – it’s kind of like a ‘wow’ moment,” she said. “That I’m there with them in that elite company, it’s hard to put into words.”
