Riley Moss could learn a thing or two about wrapping up from Lauren Gardner.
They warned me she was a hugger. What they didn’t tell me was how Gardner turns perfect strangers into friends faster than a Cale Makar wrister from the slot. Arms wide. Shoulder to shoulder. Even with a baby bump.
“My mom was trying to figure out how to budget flying out to New York to spend time with her grandbaby,” Gardner, the Altitude host whose little girl, Penelope, is due in mid-January, told me after Avalanche Media Day on Wednesday at Ball Arena. “So, this, honestly, was so perfect. It made so much sense.”
The short version of why LG came home to Altitude after more than seven years on national TV — MLB Network, NHL Network, DAZN, you name it — was family.
The long version is more interesting, of course, especially the way LG tells it. Baby on the way. Her folks are here. Same with her sister. Nieces. Nephews. Brother-in-law. Two grandmothers.
Gardner lived a short train ride from Greenwich Village for most of the last decade. But she also knew it would take a village to raise a child.
“In addition to that, my Colorado sports family,” said Gardner, 41, the Northglenn High grad, CU alum and former Broncos cheerleader. “I think there were so many times when I was in the studio, especially with NHL Network, and we would bring some of the Avalanche guys on and the Altitude guys on. And I began to get homesick.
“And it wasn’t necessarily a surprise for the folks at NHL Network. MLB Network, they also understood. They were so accommodating and so nice.”
Nice enough to let Gardner out of her contract six months early.
“On the NHL side, they all said, ‘We had a feeling this would happen one day,’” Gardner recalled. “So family was a huge reason. With our little girl on the way — there’s nothing better than raising your child near their immediate family. And now I have grandma and grandpa to help out. It’s such a gift.”
The older you get, the more you savor the simple ones. This one’s for Penny. And for Poppy, her big brother. LG and husband Patrick lost him in June 2025, five weeks before his due date. Stillbirth. Perfect pregnancy. No clear cause.
“We had so many beautiful moments,” Gardner said. “But I truly believe the universe had this happen for a reason.
“We’re so grateful that he’s watching over his little sister. And that makes it even that much more special.”
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Gardner’s re-joining Altitude, where she worked from 2016-19, in something of a Terry Shumpert role, a super “utility player” across multiple toes on the KSE/Altitude footprint. With the Avs, she’ll work rinkside and fill-in on the pregame and postgame anchor desk. With the Nuggets, it’ll be largely the same. She’s also hosting a Broncos postgame show in a Zoom format with Altitude colleagues Vic Lombardi, Darren McKee and Mike Sanford.
“I’ve had the honor of getting to be part of all these different organizations,” Gardner said, “and then when I moved on and would receive these text messages from people that I had worked with over the years, It really just felt so special to be able to connect with them in that way. And the fact that they would say they were proud, it was so touching. Because again, I don’t feel special in any way.”
Gardner announced she was leaving Denver in the winter of 2019 and took off like a red rocket for New York City. She was everywhere, and she was ours. She was even a part of MLB history in 2021 as part of the first all-female broadcast team to call a Major League game. She joined NHL Network’s all-female production of “NHL Now.” She flew the flag for the Front Range high across the Big Apple.
“I just feel so fortunate to have had these opportunities and then to have capitalized on them,” Gardner said. “And the fact that people are proud, it’s such an honor. But it’s also so humbling, and then it felt like a responsibility. But I tried to rep Colorado as best I could. And out in New York and New Jersey, people were like, ‘Colorado people are great.’”
Darn straight. She met Patrick, a Philly guy, in New York. There’s a long version of that story, too. He used to play for the Mammoth. She used to work Mammoth broadcasts. Yet it took a dating app to bring them together, years later, and in the Big Apple, of all places.
“Weren’t you a reporter for the Mammoth?” Patrick asked on that very first date.
“Yeah,” Gardner replied.
“I was actually on the team,” he countered, “but you didn’t know me.”
She didn’t. So they went back and found a Mammoth media guide they both happened to be in. If you want to find love, find something to laugh about first.
“He works remotely and he was more than happy to come out here and kind of slow things down,” Gardner said, “and be closer to my family and enable me to have this opportunity. He’s a great sport.”
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They took LG out of the mountains, but they never quite took the mountains out of LG. To find her favorite trail a year ago, it was an 80-minute train ride, via two subways through Times Square, then Grand Central Station, then a Metro-North train to the Hudson Valley and Cold Spring, N.Y.
“I just missed the nature, the fresh air and the mountains,” Gardner said. “That was the biggest thing. (New York) was vibrant and fun and had so many incredible experiences and met a lot of wonderful people who are now lifelong friends, but I just missed the mountains. And nature.”
Lauren Gardner, who returned to Denver television this summer after stints with national outlets such as MLB Network, NHL Network and DAZN, announced her pregnancy on Instagram last month. (Courtesy Lauren Gardner, @lg__red)
A pause.
“Oh, and the green chile. There’s no green chile or good Mexican food in New York. I used to crave it.”
LG’s first “I’m-really-back” moment came late last month at the Avs-DU alumni game. Gardner brought Patrick with her to Magness Arena. It was a parade of hugs from about the second they walked in the door.
“Very surreal,” she said. “That was like, ‘OK, you’re back. This is amazing.’”
It got better. She worked the game, standing on the Pios alumni bench, interviewing players and coaches. During her first “hit,” as they say in the biz, she was about to interview a DU goal-scorer when her face went up on the Magness screens.
The place went nuts.
Welcome home, kid.
“When the arena erupted, (the goal-scorer) was like, ‘What?’” Gardner laughed.
“And just the reception from fans as we were walking in that day — just that relationship that I’ve been able to forge with these people who again, are me.
“I guess whatever stroke of luck and good fortune from the universe, I have been able to be that fan that gets to be the conduit to help share these sports and these stories with the rest of the fans. So I don’t see myself as someone other than one of them.”
LG’s back. Denver’s a hugging town again. And come 2027, Little Penny in orange and blue isn’t just going to know the joys of a Chiefs IN-COM-PLETION, or every verse to “All The Small Things.” Momma’s going to make darn sure she knows, now and forever, how to wrap up.
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