Josh Norris takes controversial hit, and Sam Carrick wastes no time responding

The sequence making the rounds Tuesday night had two layers to it. First came the dangerous Anders Lee collision on Josh Norris, the kind of play that instantly changes the mood on a bench.

Then came the response. Early in the second period, Carrick stepped in and squared up with Lee, making it clear Buffalo was not going to let that earlier moment slide without pushback.

That part was expected. Carrick has always been the sort of player who will answer the bell when a teammate gets clipped hard and the game starts boiling over.

What nobody wanted was the way it ended. Carrick went down hard after the scrap and stayed on the ice clutching his arm, and the first look was ugly.

That is why the clip spread so fast. The fight itself was one thing, but the way Carrick immediately grabbed at his arm turned it into an injury story in a hurry.

The Sabres bench looked shaken, too. Players crowded around while the trainers got to him, and the whole scene had that sudden silence that takes over when everyone realizes something is wrong.

First off, here is the fight :

And here is the clip of the hit where his teammate, Josh Norris, got injured, and the reason Carrick was fighting a few minutes later…

Buffalo's pushback came with a price

From Buffalo’s side, the message was easy to understand. Norris got caught by a dangerous play, and Carrick made sure there was a response at center ice right as the second period opened.

That is part of the code inside a game like this. When a teammate takes a hit that crosses the line, somebody usually has to step into the next moment and make it known that the bench saw it.

Carrick did that. He stood up for Norris, but the cost may have been steep if that arm injury is as serious as it looked on the replay.

The eye test was rough. Carrick lost balance in the tie-up, crashed down awkwardly, and instantly curled around his arm instead of getting back to his skates.

That is where the story shifts from toughness to fallout. Buffalo can respect the response and still hate the result, because losing Carrick after a sequence like that would sting on every level.

It also adds more heat to the original Lee play. Once one dangerous collision leads to a fight and then an apparent injury, the whole sequence stops looking like a normal bit of game nastiness.

For Ruff and the Sabres, that is the real problem now. They answered for Norris, but they may have paid for that answer with one of their own players ending up in visible pain.