Amanda Kessel of the Gophers on Thursday was named one of the final 10 candidates for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the top player in women's hockey.

She had 29 goals and 71 points for the No. 2-ranked Gophers.

The candidates will be reduced to three on March 8 and the winner will be named on March 17 during the women's Frozen Four in Duluth.

Two of the other 10 finalists are Jocelyne Lamoureux and Monique Lamoureux-Kolls, juniors at North Dakota who played at Minnesota as freshmen before transferring.

Wisconsin also has two players on the list, forwards Brianna Decker, a junior, and Hilary Knight, a senior. A sixth WCHA player named a finalist is senior forward Natalie Spooner of Ohio State.

The others:

senior forward Bailey Bram, Mercyhurst

junior defenseman Laura Fortino, Cornell

senior forward Rebecca Johnston, Cornell

senior goaltender Florence Schelling, Northeastern

SOMEONE IRKED AT UMD

Usually news releases are pretty vanilla, avoiding controversy at all costs. But look at this gem from Minnesota Duluth in a release on the women's hockey Final Face-off:

The Bulldogs were spurned by the weekly USCHO.com poll for a third straight week and knocked out of the USA TODAY/USA Hockey Magazine poll, marking the first time in program history that the Bulldogs have been pushed out of both meaningless postseason polls... UMD is more importantly No. 11 in the current PairWise rankings.