Denver’s sports sweep

Denver is having one of those weeks where every scoreboard in town seems stuck on good news. On April 9, the Denver Nuggets beat Memphis 136-119 for their 10th straight win, and on April 7, the Colorado Avalanche beat St. Louis 3-1 to lock up the top seed in the National Hockey League’s Western Conference. (nba.com) (nhl.com) That run is stretching across five different levels of sport at once. The University of Denver men’s hockey team reached the national title game on April 9 with a 4-3 double-overtime win over Michigan, and Denver Summit Football Club drew 63,004 fans for its first home match on March 28, the biggest crowd ever for a National Women’s Soccer League game. (ncaa.com) (sportsbusinessjournal.com) The strangest piece might be baseball. The Colorado Rockies went 43-119 in 2025, the worst season in franchise history, and then opened April 2026 with a four-game winning streak that briefly stood as Major League Baseball’s longest active streak. (en.wikipedia.org) (nextteamup.com) The Nuggets’ streak is not just a hot week but their first double-digit streak since 2013. Denver moved to 52-28 with the April 8 win over Memphis, and NBA.com said the surge put the team 1.5 games ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers for the Western Conference’s No. 3 seed. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) The Avalanche are doing it from the opposite end of the standings. Colorado improved to 51-16-10 and 112 points by beating the Blues, which gave the club both the Central Division title and the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed before the playoffs even started. (nhl.com) (apnews.com) College hockey adds a different kind of Denver weight because the University of Denver is already the sport’s blue blood. NCAA records list the Pioneers among the most successful programs in men’s college hockey history, and this year’s team is now one win from another title after surviving Michigan in two overtimes in Las Vegas. (ncaa.com 1) (ncaa.com 2) The soccer number is the one that jumps off the page even if you do not follow the league. Denver Summit had already sold more than 45,000 tickets before kickoff, then smashed the old National Women’s Soccer League single-game record of 40,091 by bringing 63,004 people to Empower Field at Mile High. (denversummitfc.com) (sportsbusinessjournal.com) That crowd matters because it was not attached to a championship game or a one-off national event. It was the first home match for an expansion club, played in the Denver Broncos’ stadium, and it immediately gave the National Women’s Soccer League a new ceiling for what a regular-season audience can look like. (denversummitfc.com) (sports.yahoo.com) Put together, the city has a National Basketball Association team charging into the playoffs, a National Hockey League team entering the postseason as the West’s top seed, a college hockey team playing for a national championship, a women’s soccer expansion club setting league gates, and even a baseball team giving fans a rare early jolt. On April 10, there are not many American cities that can point to that many live contenders and that much turnout at the same time. (nba.com) (nhl.com) (ncaa.com) (nwslsoccer.com)