Norris suffered an upper-body injury in a loss to the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.
When the Ottawa Senators look back on their 2023-24 season, the official time of death of their playoff chances will probably be documented as February 27th in Nashville, Tennessee. Up until then, their chances had already been in poor shape for weeks, but that's probably when things flatlined, never to be revived.
That's the night the Senators were trailing in a game and failed to register a single shot in the third period. Zero shots in a period is something they've never done in their history.
If that weren't discouraging enough, let's turn to the injury report.
On Thursday at practice, the Senators were missing their top two centres – Tim Stutzle and Josh Norris – along with defencemen Thomas Chabot and Travis Hamonic. The team says that both Stutzle and Chabot were allowed to skip practice for rest and maintenance. Hamonic is out week-to-week.
But Norris's status is, by far, the biggest concern. Head coach Jacques Martin said today that Norris will be out for an "extended" period with an upper-body injury.
After a collision behind Ottawa's net on Tuesday night, Norris stayed down on the ice for several seconds and then skated off on his own, appearing to favour that left shoulder that's given him so much trouble over the last five years.
Norris had surgery on the shoulder in 2019 and then had a second surgery on it in February of last year. Seven months later, he was expected to be at full strength for training camp in September but he wasn't. He missed all of camp and the first three games of the regular season.
For the first half of the season, Norris had a lot of nights where he appeared somewhat tentative, and his offensive stats weren't where you might expect. While he had recently picked his game up and become consistently dangerous, he was often seen with his left shoulder covered in KT tape.
The biggest concern about Norris now isn't just when he'll be ready to play again, but whether he'll ever be able to consistently remain in the lineup or get back to being effective when he is.
That's not what the team wants to hear about a player who's meant to be part of its core and still owed almost $48 million over the next six years.