Calgary (24-24-3) has been outscored 20-7 during its losing streak. The Flames are one point ahead of the Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference, and the Kings and Canucks each have three games in hand.
Gulutzan thought the losing streak had already dropped the Flames out of a playoff spot and wondered if that would spark them.
"We going to start to play now?" Gulutzan said. "Now when it gets easy, maybe? That's when we play? That's the concern."
The Flames came out strong Tuesday, but Canadiens forward Andrew Shaw scored the opening goal with 43 seconds left in the first period, eight seconds after a long shift by Flames forwards Lance Bouma, Matt Stajan and Alex Chiasson.
"We extend ourselves on a minute shift, we've got our fourth line out there, they decide to take one more crack at it because they've scored so many goals, and they all come off and let them fly into our zone and catch the other line a little off guard," Gulutzan said. "That's what happened on the first goal."
The Flames play their final game before the All-Star break at the Ottawa Senators on Thursday to close a three-game road trip (7:30 p.m. ET; SNW, TSN5, RDS2, NHL.TV).
"Well, you've got to man up, you know?" Gulutzan said. "You've just got to man up. I mean, we play well, one bad thing happens, we crumble. We crumble. Everybody talks about our starts; our starts have been good. One little shot, it goes in, we crumble. We just crumble. We have no resolve to stay with it.
"We've got to look internally here at ourselves, everybody, everybody in the organization and figure out how we're going to pull ourselves out. Because the League doesn't feel sorry for you."
