It was the second NHL goal for the 21-year-old defenseman, who scored one in four games last season.
“If you know you get a special talent, you hope that it comes through, and I think tonight was a great example of that,” Senators coach Travis Green said of Yakemchuk. “It’d be easy to just not play him or put someone else out there, but we stuck with him.”
Linus Ullmark made 28 saves, and Nick Cousins also scored for the Senators (3-1-0).
“It was awesome. I think we stuck with it the whole way,” Ottawa captain Thomas Chabot said. “It was one of those games. I mean, we had a lot of looks, nothing was going in, and obviously, ‘Yak’ had a big-time goal.”
Matvei Michkov scored for the Flyers (0-3-2), who opened the season with five straight losses for the first time since starting 0-3-3 in 2008-09. Woll made 24 saves.
“We didn’t get the result that we needed, but at least we got a good effort,” Philadelphia captain Sean Couturier said. “We can build on some good things that we did tonight, at least. But yeah, we’ve got to keep grinding, finding ways to get the wins here.”
Cousins gave the Senators a 1-0 lead at 10:14 of the first period, tipping a Tyler Kleven shot from the point past Woll.
“You knew Philly was going to play a hell of a game tonight,” Green said. “I thought they did. It was just a greasy, greasy game that had a lot of intensity to it, and we wanted to win that.”