Nikolai Kovalenko was the lone goal scorer in the Avalanche’s 4-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night. The young forward has excelled in his rookie season so far showing improvement and growth as he’s moved around the lineup.

“He’s starting to emerge as a guy that’s pretty dangerous. His strength of his game, for me, is tops of the circles down in the offensive zone. He can play in traffic. He’s got a low center of gravity. He’s hard to knock off the puck. He’s slippery and deceptive down there,” head coach Jared Bednar said.

The 25-year-old Russian has eight points (4G, 4A) in 25 games and has played on different lines as players have come in and out of the lineup. He was on the fourth line but moved up in Jonathan Drouin’s absence (upper-body injury).

“I’ve liked him more when we played him with a little bit more skill — played him up in the lineup. It seems like he thrives on that a little bit and likes that responsibility,” Bednar said after the 2-1 shootout win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday. “We restructured our lines before tonight’s game, and that’s where we put him in. I thought he was good, and he was good at the end of the Tampa game too, with (Casey) Mittelstadt and Val (Nichushkin).”

The Avalanche drafted the 5-foot-10, 180-pound forward 171st overall in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. He played his first NHL game in Game 4 of the first round of the 2023-24 Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Winnipeg Jets. He played four regular-season games and two playoff games for the Colorado Eagles last season.

Kovalenko, son of former Quebec Nordiques/Avalanche forward Andrei, has acclimated quickly to the NHL. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but raised in Russia. He played in the Russian Junior Hockey League and the Kontinental Hockey League, so it was expected he’d need time to adjust to the North American version of the game.

“He’s still learning a couple things, like time and score of the game. I want him making skilled plays, but I also want him making high-percentage plays. I don’t want anything blind going into traffic areas, and I don’t want him to force things when he can use his legs as an escape and hang on to the puck a little bit more,” Bednar said. “There’s a fine line between turning the puck over a lot and executing a lot of plays and turning it over every once in a while in a non-dangerous situation, right? So that’s part of the game that he’s learning.”

He played on the second line with Mittelstadt and Mikko Rantanen in the 5-3 loss to the Dallas Stars, and the 2-1 shootout win vs Vegas. He’s been on the second power-play unit and has recently increased his ice time. His average time on ice in the four games from Nov. 15 – Nov. 23 was 7:26. It jumped to 13:08 in the last four.

“From the start of the year to now, he’s a much more responsible checker and a better defender than he was early in the year. He’s getting himself above the puck quicker and just looks like he’s getting used to the way the North American game is played,” Bednar said.

Kovalenko will have more ice time as he slots in higher in the lineup. That will likely change when Drouin and Ross Colton (expected back in mid-December) return. Until then, he has earned his promotion to the second line.