Claude Giroux and the Senators roll to a 5-2 win over the Flyers

OTTAWA, Ontario — Night, meet day.

As good as the Flyers looked during even-strength play during their season-opening win Thursday night, they looked like a different team Saturday afternoon inside Canadian Tire Centre. And they weren’t much better when playing a man down.

On a day former Flyers captain Claude Giroux was honored for reaching a career milestone, the Senators dominated much of the game, forced the Flyers to scramble at times in their own end, and rolled to a 5-2 win.

Giroux had a big part in it all, too.

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Facing their second home opener in three days, the Flyers were on the defensive early, as Ottawa got out to a fast start.

While the Flyers withstood the early pressure Thursday night, they never really got anything going Saturday.

The ice was tilted toward their defensive zone for nearly the entirety of the 5-on-5 play, and the Flyers looked a step slow all day.

“They had the puck most of the night,” Flyers coach John Tortorella said.

When it wasn’t even strength, the Senators made the Flyers pay for their penalties. While the Flyers were perfect on the penalty kill Thursday night, the Senators made it look easy, scoring on three of their five power-play chances. The Flyers, meanwhile, were 1-for-6 while a man up.

“We played against a much more skilled team,” Tortorella said. “We don’t even give ourselves a chance by taking that many penalties.”

“I think there might have been some hesitations,” Flyers winger Garnet Hathaway said of the penalty killing. “I take blame for that, too. I was out there for one where we’re trying to read off each other. A power play like this that moves the puck, gets the puck to the net quickly too, and has one-timers set up like that … that’s where we lost the game, I’d say. So we have a lot to work on.”

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There was a lengthy pregame ceremony honoring Giroux reaching 1,000 points, which he did at the end of last season. Multiple Flyers appeared on a video montage, and Scott Laughton and Sean Couturier joined Giroux on the ice.

Giroux reached the 1,000-point mark in the penultimate game of Ottawa’s 2022-23 season during a 3-2 win over Carolina. Saturday was Ottawa’s first home game since.

Giroux finished his 15-season stint in Philadelphia with 900 points, second in franchise history behind Bobby Clarke (1,210).

He added to his point count late in the second period, stripping Travis Sanheim of the puck to set up a Brady Tkachuk goal that beat the horn by six seconds and allowed Ottawa to take a two-goal lead into the third period.

“I played that 2-on-1, was able to intercept it, and when I went to spin up ice, Tkachuk kind of spun away, so I thought I had more time,” Sanheim said. “G kind of snuck in behind me and made a good play.

“If I just clear the puck, we go into the third down one. That’s probably a back-breaker there.”

Giroux later assisted on Tkachuk’s second goal, a 4-on-3 tally that gave Ottawa an extra cushion with a 5-2 advantage.

Giroux led all skaters with five shots on goal.

Tortorella spent most of training camp talking about how he wanted to get “the kids” in the mix, and after two of those players — winger Tyson Foerster and defenseman Emil Andrae — sat out the opener Thursday night, Tortorella got them into Saturday’s lineup.

Of course, Foerster and Andrae being in was at the expense of two other young players: Bobby Brink and Egor Zamula.

Foerster started the game by replacing Brink on the top line with Couturier and Joel Farabee, while Andrae slotted on a pairing with Nick Seeler.

Foerster was in the mix on the Flyers’ first goal, sending a shot on net that Travis Konecny put in to cut a 2-0 Senators lead to one goal. It came on a 5-on-3 power play.

Foerster later had a bad turnover that led to an odd-man rush and a Foerster slashing penalty. Ottawa scored its third goal on the ensuing power play when Jake Sanderson blasted a shot by Carter Hart, who appeared to be screened by Flyers defenseman Marc Staal.

Andrae, making his debut, got a nice “welcome to the NHL” moment when he was flattened in the corner by Ridly Greig. The Senators took advantage and found Jakob Chychrun open, and he didn’t miss, giving Ottawa a 1-0 lead less than three minutes into the game.

The shuffling didn’t stop with the pregame moves. After the Flyers had nothing going during 5-on-5 play, the Flyers mixed up three-quarters of their forward lines to try to turn things around.

On this day, nothing was working.

“Our penalty kill, our power play, our offense, our defense, we were outplayed in all categories tonight,” Tortorella said.

The Flyers are off Sunday. They face Vancouver on Tuesday night in their home opener (NBCSP) at the Wells Fargo Center. The start time was moved up to 6 p.m. to accommodate the extra traffic at the sports complex with a home Phillies playoff game and a Mexico-Germany men’s soccer game at Lincoln Financial Field.