Kansas’ Fish Smithson Has Strong Bond With His Brother Shaky

The Professional Women’s Hockey League is stopping in Denver during its PWHL Takeover Tour next year. The Montreal Victoire will take on the Minnesota Frost on Jan. 12 at Ball Arena. It will be the third stop on a nine-date tour featuring regular-season games played in neutral sites, the league announced Monday. “Bringing PWHL games to fans across both countries is a natural next step as we continue building our audience,” PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said in a news release. It’s a homecoming for Minnesota goaltender Nicole Hensley, a Lakewood native who is a fixture on the United States national team and a two-time Olympian.

Troy Renck: Bo Nix proved himself as a franchise quarterback against the Chiefs. On Sunday, he announced himself as the NFL’s best rookie quarterback. Who says no? The idea Nix could elevate above Washington’s Jayden Daniels seemed unthinkable when he was throwing interceptions against the Seahawks, struggling to grip the ball against the New York Jets and looking lost against the Chargers.

Sean Payton ended his Monday conference call with a quip. “It’s Bo Nix day, huh?” he said with a dash of (perhaps forced) incredulity after nearly every question centered on his rookie quarterback. Sunday certainly was. Nix turned in the best game of his career in shredding the Falcons in a 38-6 win.

A loss in the Summit League championship game didn’t come at much of a cost to the University of Denver men’s soccer program. Instead, the Pioneers’ overall body of work won over the selection committee as DU was given the No. 3 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament bracket revealed on Monday morning. With the seed, the Pios received a bye into the second round of the tournament and a date with the winner of Thursday’s first-round match between Oregon State and Gardner-Webb.

Alterra Mountain Company, which operates 19 ski resorts in North America including two in Colorado, will offer free skiing for kids during the second week of December. The Denver-based resort company made the announcement Monday. It owns Steamboat and operates Winter Park, which is owned by the city of Denver. It owns 15 other conventional ski resorts and two heli-skiing operations in British Columbia.

Oregon remained the unanimous No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll Sunday after its close call at Wisconsin, Notre Dame and Alabama each jumped up two spots and Georgia returned to the top 10. LSU is unranked for the first time in two years. The unbeaten Ducks are atop the AP Top 25 for the fifth straight week, passing Texas as the No.