Sabres’ Josh Norris leaves game vs. Flyers with upper-body injury

The Buffalo Sabres ruled forward Josh Norris out from the remainder of their game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday after he left midway through the second period with an upper-body injury.

Norris, 26, has six goals and 17 points in 19 games with the Sabres this year. The 6’2″ center already missed nearly two months of action earlier in the 2025-26 campaign after sustaining an injury in Buffalo’s season opener.

After recording the primary assist on Rasmus Dahlin’s power-play goal at the 13:51 mark of the second period, Norris appeared to be favoring his mid-section during the celebration. The Oxford, MI product did not take another shift after the goal and was absent from Buffalo’s bench when the team returned from the second intermission.

The Sabres led the Flyers by a 4-1 score after 40 minutes of play at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo. Fueled in large part by Norris making his return to the lineup on Dec. 1, the Sabres have gone 14-5-0 in the weeks since and are now within striking distance of an Eastern Conference playoff berth.

A first-round pick (No. 19 overall) of the San Jose Sharks in the 2017 NHL Draft, Norris never played for his draft club before being sent to the Ottawa Senators in 2018 as part of the blockbuster Erik Karlsson trade. Norris spent parts of seven seasons with the Senators to begin his NHL career, scoring 35 goals in 2021-22 but quickly earning a reputation as being particularly prone to injury.

Late in the 2024-25 season, the Senators traded Norris and Jacob Bernard-Docker to the Sabres in exchange for Dylan Cozens, Dennis Gilbert, and a 2026 second-round draft pick. Norris scored a goal and an assist in three games with the Sabres immediately following the trade but subsequently sustained a season-ending injury.

In 258 career games with the Sabres and Senators, Norris has collected 97 goals, 175 points, and 107 penalty minutes. He never reached the playoffs with Ottawa, being traded by the Senators mere weeks before they ended a playoff drought that began two seasons before he made his NHL debut.