The Flyers aren’t going to name a captain. Really, they don’t need one.

OTTAWA, Ontario — The last member of the Flyers to wear the captain’s “C” on his jersey is here now, across the other side of the red line Saturday when the Flyers and Senators meet up for a matinee.

Claude Giroux was everything a captain is supposed to be in the NHL. Remember the 2012 playoff series against Pittsburgh? Specifically the opening shift of Game 6, when the then-24-year-old center flattened Sidney Crosby, then brought 19,000-plus to their feet with the opening salvo 32 seconds into a series-clinching 5-1 win.

Giroux wasn’t even the captain then. He was an alternate to Chris Pronger, who played his final NHL game earlier that season.

If there was any doubt who was getting the “C” the following season, that moment extinguished it.

Travis Konecny was just a 15-year-old kid then. He joined Giroux and the Flyers four years later, in the fall of 2016, and knew it was Giroux’s team. It had been for four seasons already, and remained so for the next six, until the Flyers traded Giroux to Florida for Owen Tippett and draft picks.

“G was leading the charge every day,” Konecny said.

Since the day Giroux was traded, the Flyers have been without a captain, and since coach John Tortorella took over last year, the Flyers have had just one player wearing a letter, Scott Laughton, who sports the “A” for alternate captain on his jersey.

The Flyers are one of five teams in the NHL without a captain. Their company: Anaheim, Arizona, Chicago, and Seattle. Not exactly a collection of teams with winning in their immediate futures.

Tortorella made a point multiple times throughout training camp that he likes this Flyers room a lot more than he did last year’s. The coach had some friction with Kevin Hayes last season. And Ivan Provorov and friction in this Flyers locker room seemed to go together like peanut butter and jelly toward the end. Both of those players had been alternate captains before Tortorella’s arrival.

» READ MORE: Former Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov says Flyers were ‘making my game worse’

There’s a bit of new flavor in the locker room this year. The organization has gone public with its rebuilding intentions. Sean Couturier, once an alternate himself, is back. So is fellow veteran Cam Atkinson. There are younger players making their mark. Tortorella’s rigorous training camp came as no surprise. Add it all up and things are generally positive right now in Flyers land. But as Tortorella noted Thursday morning in Columbus: “Every coach is probably saying that right now.”

But if you think the coach’s liking the room more means more letters being stitched onto jerseys, that’s not the reality.

“We’re keeping it status quo for the year,” Tortorella said. “I want to see how it develops. We’re in no rush to put letters on people because I want to allow people to feel like they have the opportunity to say something. I’ve always said, we have great athletes in our game and they respect the hierarchy of a locker room. You start putting letters on people because you think you need to put letters on people, it may stunt some other people. So we’re going to leave that wide open.

“Where we’re at with some of the youth and rebuilding, we want to see some different voices step up. That’s what I like about our room, I think there’s some more openness. I think they’ve grown to have a little bit of togetherness through our camp.”

In some ways, it is Laughton’s team. His teammates were open about his earning the lone “A” last season. He was the one making a statement this week about how the league plans to handle Pride nights. But in a lot of ways it’s also everyone’s team.

Konecny wouldn’t say the captaincy title means any less today than it did in yesteryear, but he did suggest this current team is a bit different right now.

“In here, it doesn’t matter,” Konecny said. “Guys know who and when to listen to which guys. Guys set examples on the ice. You still can sense the guys that are trying to lead. Letters or not, guys in here know.”

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Konecny, the team’s leading goal scorer last season, said he has enjoyed every version of the locker room in his seven seasons with the Flyers. This one, he said, “is still growing.”

But what stands out?

“Everyone here is on board with what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said.

The Flyers opened their 2023-24 season with a 4-2 win on the road. Did they look like a team that needed a captain?

Sure, Laughton mixed it up a few times when there were scrums and delivered a slick assist. But Couturier was the do-it-all center he has always been. Travis Sanheim played like a top defenseman is supposed to play. Konecny scored twice. The Flyers’ fourth line played hard and physical. Noah Cates looked like the two-way talent he showed last season. Owen Tippett drove the puck toward the net hard and fast. Marc Staal looked, at times, like a steadying veteran presence.

Would a letter on a uniform have changed any of that?