With Sidney Crosby shielding the puck with the ferocity of a lioness protecting her cubs, Evgeni Malkin at his swooping, swerving, large-bird-of-prey predatory best, Phil Kessel picking holes in the net and Patric Hornqvist infiltrating the grimy areas to maximum advantage, the Pittsburgh Penguins won 9-1 at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
On the heels of two high-shots-against games, one of them stolen by goaltender David Rittich in New York, the Flames were flat.
"That's definitely three games of being outplayed,'' agreed Flames' boss Bill Peters. "No question about that."
Tough to swallow, for everyone.
"At the start," said Matthew Tkachuk, "we actually we weren't too bad. We kinda got into a little bit of a track-meet mindset and with a team that talented, that's kinda what they want.
"Next game we have to play closer together, play like five guys together.
"We kinda got blown out of the building there.
"I thought the first half of the game we outworked them. Maybe just some decision making, giving up a lot of odd-man rushes, not covering for the D when the D were coming down. Little stuff.
"Managing the puck a little better."
Crosby, fresh off a jaw-scraping, individual-effort OT winner up in Edmonton, got things going, holding off Sam Bennett to absolutely wire a backhander - no one in the modern game does it better - through a window the size of a mouse hole over Mike Smith's left shoulder at 4:23.
A Hornqvist downward deflection and Rust slicing the Calgary defence open had the Pens comfortably ahead 3-0 by period's end.
Popping out of the penalty box after serving a slashing sentence, Kessel gathered up a clearance and sailed in alone to snap the puck past Smith 1:17 into the second.
Rittich came on in pinch-hit duty and surrendered the Pens' closing three goals.
"Not good," acknowledged Tkachuk, "but there were still a lot of fans that stayed to the end. A pretty dedicated bunch here. I love playing in front of them. Their support is a big reason why we get excited to play.
"They want to see results out there and it's our job to deliver."
James Neal knuckle-balled a boomerang shot past Matt Murray with 1:26 left to spoil the Penguin goaltender's shutout bid.
"The late one in the first and the early one in the second, right?"pinpointed Peters of the critical letdown period. "We sagged a little bit and we didn't have any resiliency.
"We ended up trying to do too much, do everybody's job instead of doing our (own) jobs. We didn't do a very good job on the forecheck, didn't have much zone time as we'd have liked."
Getting this cleaned up, post haste, is paramount given that Alex Ovechkin and the Cup-champ Caps, certain to be smarting after a 4-1 loss to the Oilers on Thursday, are in for a Saturday matinee before the Flames travel east to Toronto to tangle with John Tavares, Austen Matthews and the blossoming Maple Leafs.
"It starts in our own end,'' said Giordano. "It's way too loose. Just unnecessary chances against, all game.
"It's easy now to point fingers but we have to look at ourselves, individually, and then sit down together as a team and go over what we have to do to get wins.
"It's not working and we have to figure it out.
"Quick."
