Ask which NHL regular is getting carried hardest right now, and the answer is skating in Buffalo's top six every night: Josh Norris. The Sabres are the only team on earth that would keep running him out there.
Start with the money, because the money is why this is happening. Norris is on an eight-year, $63.6 million deal that carries a cap hit of $7.95 million and runs through the end of 2029-30. That's top-four forward pay. He's Buffalo's highest-paid forward. Through the team's first 15 games this season, he has two goals and one assist, with no points in his last six.
A cold stretch happens to everyone. Norris's problem runs deeper than that. He has 16 shots on the year and just one in his last three games. He's barely getting pucks anywhere near the net. When he's on the ice at five-on-five, the Sabres have been outscored 10-5. A player paid like a difference-maker is a hole in the lineup right now, and the hole isn't closing.
Buffalo also gave up Dylan Cozens and a second-round pick to get him. This is their third season with Norris, and the contract that looked like a coup now looks like an anchor nobody else would touch. Three years remain after this one at $7.95 million, attached to a forward who can't buy a scoring chance and can't be counted on to stay healthy. He appeared in just 44 of a possible 82 games last season, and he's missed 186 games since his last fully healthy year. He opened this season on injured reserve before returning. The durability case for keeping him in the lineup doesn't exist.
When Norris was healthy last regular season, he was a useful player, and plenty of guys get buried in October before heating up. But a slump is a scorer who isn't finishing. Norris isn't generating anything to finish. There's no shot volume to regress back toward, no flood of chances waiting to turn into goals.
Strip away the contract and the trade, and a player producing like this gets scratched or sent down. Buffalo won't do either. With Jiri Kulich on the way back, the lineup math already points to Norris being the man who comes out, and the real reason is simpler: benching him means standing at a podium and admitting they lost the trade and signed the bad contract. The front office is protecting its own decision at the expense of the roster, and every night Norris takes a regular shift, they're telling on themselves.
