Bruce Garrioch of The Ottawa Sun has reported that the Ottawa Senators are hopeful centerman Joshua Norris can make his season debut in their Wednesday night game. Norris has been absent for the entirety of the early season and much of training camp, continuing to nurse a shoulder injury that was initially suffered roughly one year ago.
The injury held Norris out of all but eight games in the 2022-23 season, cutting short what would have been his third NHL season. Norris played 66 games in the 2021-22 campaign, scoring a dazzling 35 goals and 55 points. His 35-goal mark was, at the time, the most scored by a Senator in a decade, although Brady Tkachuk tied it and Tim Stutzle topped it with 39 goals last year. Norris showed similar goal-scoring capabilities in his rookie season of 2020-21, netting 17 goals in 56 games, tied for third on the Ottawa roster.
Norris returned to practice centering the Senators’ third line, between Drake Batherson and Dominik Kubalik. Batherson has been one of Norris’ most common linemates throughout his first two NHL seasons, with the duo accounting for 75 goals for and 44 goals against through a combined 1042 minutes of ice time together.
More notes from around the league:
- The latest episode of the ’Big Show with Rusic and Rose’ shared that Calgary is reengaging in preliminary trade talks for goaltender Daniel Vladar. They also shared that Calgary shopped Vladar this summer, but the cost was too high for interested teams. It’s unsure whether the Flames have changed their asking price now that the season has begun. Vladar has an expensive $2.2MM cap hit but could be a hot commodity for teams looking to bolster their goaltending room.
- 2023 NHL Draft Top 10 pick Dalibor Dvorsky has mutually terminated his contract with IK Oskarshamn. Dvorsky was loaned to the Swedish club at the start of the year but has gone without a point through their first 10 games of the season. Dvorsky is expected to join the Sudbury Wolves of the OHL.