The Buffalo Sabres won on Monday, an odd 5-3 matinee win over the Florida Panthers in which goalie Colten Ellis was pulled, defenseman Rasmus Dahlin was hurt — and in which Josh Norris hit his new low with the Sabres.
Norris is supposed to be a part of Buffalo’s rising core of young forwards who are leading them even higher up the NHL pecking order.
Instead, Norris himself is falling down the Sabres’ lineup and quickly raising questions about what his future might hold.
Josh Norris Hits New Low
The first sign that something was up with Norris came during warmups on Monday.
He skated on the fourth line as the center between Tyson Kozak and Beck Malenstyn.
Norris has been higher than that in the lineup pretty much always since he’s arrived in Buffalo.
On Monday, though, Tage Thompson and Noah Ostlund and Ryan McLeod all lined up as centers above Norris.
The Sabres don’t always play Thompson up the middle, but once they did, it gave Norris very little place to go.
And so he was down on the fourth line, not anything like a fourth-line grinder but with no other spot in the lineup available to him.
His playing time reflected it. Norris got just 11:24 on the ice.
He did still see 2:43 on the power play, a sign that Buffalo hasn’t given up on him, but Norris didn’t have a point or record any statistic in his plus-minus, so it was a relatively low-impact day for him as far as the outcome of the game was concerned.
Josh Norris Stats
Whether it’s temporary or not, Norris’ demotion down to the bottom line does follow a slow start to the season for him.
Now through six games, Norris has just a single assist, and he’s a minus-3.
Norris has just seven shots on goal through six games. He’s just not putting a lot of pressure on the defense.
He also hasn’t made the improvements that have been expected in recent seasons.
As far back as 2021-22 with Ottawa, Norris had 55 points — 35 goals and 20 assists.
He struggled with injuries each of the next two years.
In 2024-25, he got 35 points in 56 games — 21 goals and 14 assists.
Last season, he was at 34 points in 44 games — 13 goals and 21 assists.
The rates have still been pretty good, but Norris hasn’t stayed on the ice, and now he has begun this season quite slow.
Buffalo has other talented forwards to give time to, so Norris will have to prove he’s still worthy of ample action on the ice.
Right now, he’s not even shooting the puck, which makes it hard to prove his worth for a guy who has 104 goals in his NHL career (compared to 89 assists).
It’s still early in the season, but Norris might have to get a wakeup call from how he was used on Monday afternoon to start turning this campaign around.
Josh Norris Hits New Low With Sabres