“He’s Ahead Of Schedule” | Lindy Ruff With Josh Norris Update | Buffalo Sabres

I don’t uh we going to be further evaluated today, but obviously going to be a little bit of time for him. I don’t have a time frame yet. Josh, Jason Zucker out on the ice. Do you have a timeline for them in the lineup tonight or this week? Well, they won’t be in the lineup tonight. Um, you know, I think the soonest we could see him is by this uh coming weekend. Um, it’s the first time they’ve been on the ice, haven’t practiced. Uh, this is just the early stages for uh I think one player is a player coming off sickness, one player’s coming off injury. So, we’re dealing with two different um probably two different timets. How do you think in terms of Norris a little bit accelerated what you initially thought? Yeah, he’s he’s done better, which is encouraging for sure. Uh, you know, I think we originally thought a little bit longer, but he’s feeling real good. Um, so just try to keep progressing him, but to have him out there was really I I look at it as ahead of schedule. He was six weeks ago that he was having a hard time. How is he? Well, I think he’s he’s really encouraged because things have things have felt a lot better than he thought they were going to feel. Uh I think that’s got some excitement in him. That applies to No, I I I mean I don’t know about Norris. Uh I I’m saying probably uh with Zucker that you know this weekend I I don’t take it that Norris would be this is just early stages of coming back from an injury that we there’s been no physicality. There’s been no no practices. Like I said the two are different. One’s sickness and one is you’re going to have to see where it goes after practice and stuff like that. Yeah, for sure. um uh you know he battled whatever it was that that it’s took took its toll but uh you know we’ll get him going this week and uh you know I think in a sense too that that just coming back uh you got to be a little bit careful too when you’re you’ve lost that much weight I think you’re susceptible to you know to further injury if you’re if you’re not close to where you need to be for Michael he’s been through a obviously position very excited to come here for him. Yeah, you know, I think uh the first the knee injury that he had to really set him back just trying to find his game again and now uh you know suffered another lower body injury which uh you know I talked about his previous injury. He said he’d never been hurt before. So um I know he’s disappointed. We’ll get the further evaluation and see where where that takes us with them. It’s not they’re not related. No. No. First one is totally different from from this one. You guys in the last seven games not over. Well, you know, I think uh when you look at the lineup and the the number of pieces we’ve had to move around and and the people that are I think your shot volume uh is probably going to go down a little bit. Uh I would anticipate that now starting to get healthier with, you know, more people back that the volume should go up. Uh we’ve been talking a lot about, you know, we’re deferring sometimes to looking for the better play. I think we’ve uh we’ve got to get better at getting more pucks inside and then the shots will go up also. I’m sure a few times you’ve seen the player guys that Yeah. You know, I thought last game we made better decisions like on our oddnumbered rushes. If you look at the the twoon-1s, the decision to shoot was they they were good decisions because the way Detroit played them pretty well took the pass away. Uh so I thought some of their decisions were better. Uh I look at the number of opportunities, even the number of shots where we’ve missed nets in the past that have, you know, you don’t get the original shot and you don’t get a a followup because you’ve put it on net has hurt us. Um we’ve hit a lot of posts. I think we’ve hit the most post in the league and that those don’t count as shots either. So I mean there’s we’ve looked at a lot of things where you know obviously shot volume is is good. Um you know you just can’t start flinging pucks from outside and just giving them to the goalender either. So I mean we’ve got to we’ve got to have traffic and we’ve got to make goalies fight for it. Uh, you know, I think the goal that Don scored great into quick DD, quick wristster, uh, that type of shot, uh, with traffic is is great. I think you’re coming in as a forward, you just can’t yell at the player to shoot the puck. Um, you know, you got if you’re going to get zone time, you got to be able to if if you’re not in a in a good area, you got to have make a better play a lot of times. You know, he said he feels a little bit more like himself. I’m curious if you see anything different. this time around at center? No, I you know, I think that all I know is the numbers, you know, were in his favor when he was playing the wing. Uh, and I think that sometimes that’s the chemistry you’ve had with the players you’re playing with. Uh, I think this time around without Kik and Benson, it it’s been different. So, putting them back in in the middle, I think, has helped them out. We haven’t quite found that same type of chemistry. He uh you know, you’re looking at two lefties playing with a righty on the right side, which his points per game were were better when he was over there versus playing in the middle. Uh but uh you know, since going back now and and putting uh putting Tuck over there, um you know, we’re going to try Don with them tonight. I think they finished the game. They look pretty good. Uh you know, hopefully we can get some chemistry there. like uh you know I think he’s made some some big saves at key times uh for us. His puck play is I think has helped us out. Um you know you can frustrate a team by you know the other team’s goalender making sure that you’re picking off the rims and you’re stopping the plays they’re going around. You can break out a little bit quicker. He’s been good with that. Uh but the most important part is, you know, sometimes for a goalender is just getting that big save at a crucial time. And I think you look at the save we got uh on that last penalty kill. It was it was a big save at that time of the game for us. It helped us win a hockey game. Lindy, two days after comeback win, how do you want your team to kind of harness the momentum and energy it got from that win and how they answered that? Uh, you know, I think look at uh some of the good stuff we did. Uh, build off that. Uh, again, uh, we talked about as a team, we we got to come out, we got to come out better. We’ve had on that road trip, we most games, two out of three periods we played well. We had, you know, and sometimes you momentum is a crazy thing. You try to gather it in a game or you try to take it away from the opposition. I think there’s a couple times the opposition’s had momentum in the game and we haven’t been able to get it back. Uh we’ve talked about our first period, you know, the type of goals we gave up in Colorado right off the bat, you know, so you know, there’s areas we know we need to improve, but the some of the stuff we want to take out of that out of that third period is the pace we played at, uh the physicality we played with, um and and try to build off that momentum. You know, you gota we we know he’s gonna be able to create. He’s one of the elite elite guys that can uh cut back, stop on a dime, create space. We got to make sure we keep him through the outside. We know we’re not going to totally eliminate them, but we’ve got to we’ve got to do a good job of having people inside, not let pucks go through us. Thanks.

Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff spoke to the media ahead of a matchup with the Edmonton Oilers on November 17, 2025. Ruff gave injury updates on Michael Kesselring who left the previous game with an injury. Jason Zucker and Josh Norris returned to morning skate and Ruff gave an update of when the team can expect them back. He also previewed the matchup with the Oilers.

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