Denver’s sports surge

Denver has reached the point where one city can flip from baseball to basketball to hockey to college hockey to women’s soccer to box lacrosse and keep finding a team near the top. On April 10, the Denver Nuggets were on a 10-game winning streak, the Colorado Avalanche had already locked up the top seed in the Western Conference, and the University of Denver had just played its way into the national title game in men’s hockey. (nba.com, nhl.com, ncaa.com) The Nuggets’ run is the cleanest example because the streak is official and current. Denver beat Memphis 136-119 on April 8 for its 10th straight win, and the team said it was the first 10-game streak of the Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray era. (nba.com, nba.com) That streak did not come out of nowhere in the last 48 hours. Denver’s own game coverage said the win over San Antonio on April 4 was its eighth straight and already the longest active streak in the National Basketball Association, so the club has spent nearly a week extending a league-best run instead of starting one. (nba.com) The Avalanche are even further along on the calendar. Colorado beat St. Louis 3-1 on April 7, and that win clinched both the Central Division title and the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference for the Stanley Cup playoffs. (nhl.com) College hockey added another layer on April 9 in Las Vegas. The University of Denver beat Michigan in double overtime in the Frozen Four semifinal, which moved the Pioneers from “one of the last four teams standing” to one win away from the program’s 11th national championship. (ncaa.com, denverpioneers.com) Women’s soccer supplied the loudest single-day number of the stretch. Denver Summit Football Club drew 63,004 fans for its inaugural home match against the Washington Spirit on March 28, and that crowd set a new National Women’s Soccer League single-game attendance record by more than 20,000 over the previous mark of 40,091. (espn.com, usatoday.com) Box lacrosse is part of the same pileup, even if it gets less national attention. The Colorado Mammoth entered April 10 at 11-5, tied with Vancouver and Saskatchewan for the best record shown at the top of the National Lacrosse League standings, so Denver had a first-place tie in yet another pro league. (nll.com, coloradomammoth.com) The oddball in the group is baseball, because the Rockies are usually the Denver team left out of these spring bragging rights. Yet by April 9 they were listed on a four-game winning streak, which outside trackers and standings pages showed as the longest active streak in Major League Baseball at that moment. (mlb.com, espn.com, nextteamup.com) Put together, the timing is what makes this feel unusual instead of merely busy. The Avalanche clinched on April 7, the Nuggets hit 10 straight on April 8, the Pioneers won a Frozen Four semifinal on April 9, and all of it landed within two weeks of a 63,004-person women’s soccer opener and a three-way tie atop the National Lacrosse League standings. (nhl.com, nba.com, ncaa.com, espn.com, nll.com) Most cities get this kind of run from one team at a time. Denver got it from six at once, across six different versions of the sport business: a National Basketball Association contender, a National Hockey League top seed, a college hockey blueblood, a National Women’s Soccer League expansion club, a National Lacrosse League co-leader, and, for at least one strange early-April week, a Colorado Rockies team that was actually the one carrying the longest baseball streak. (nba.com, nhl.com, denverpioneers.com, espn.com, nll.com, espn.com)