But it wasn't for a lack of effort, says captain Mark Giordano.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
"We gave up a ton of chances and a ton of shots, but it was because we were trying too hard," he said. "We were trying to erase that three-goal lead right away and were taking too many risks, leading to all those odd-man rushes.
"Right now, they're feeling good about themselves and they're playing with a lot of confidence. There is no reason for us to be playing with any sort of fear. Let's go out and have fun and play with confidence."
The Flames, admittedly, got away from their game early in the opening frame, after MacKinnon put the homeside up 2-0 with a pair of powerplay strikes.
The rest of the night was spent chasing and forcing plays through the middle of the ice at the offensive blue-line, where the Avalanche feasted and created all kind of chaos off the rush.
Ryan, though, says the Flames have a plan to counteract that in Game 4.
"We can be aggressive, but patient at the same time," he said. "To this point, all the rush chances they're getting, it's because we're giving it to them. Simple.
"Turnovers at the blueline, losing our guy in the neutral zone - it's all proven costly.
"But we know how to defend these guys. We want to have our third forward staying a bit higher, above them to not allow them any free ice, and also have the rest of us re-loading faster on the back-check.
"Just wait for the game to come to us. Their top guys are playing a lot and we can frustrate them by sitting back a little bit.
"They had too much fun last night. That's easy hockey for them.
"We need to get back to making it hard."