Jumping out to an early lead, the Flames broke the ice when Andrew Mangiapane set up Dillon Dube for a shorthanded goal on a 2-on-1 rush to make it 1-0 at 3:05. Later striking on the other side of special teams, Jonathan Huberdeau scored on the power play to make it 2-0 at 9:21.
Padding the lead for the Flames, Rasmus Andersson jumped on a rebound, glided in toward the right side of the net and ripped a shot past Sergei Bobrovsky to make it 3-0 at 12:03.
Getting the Panthers on the board in the second period, Nick Cousins stuck out his stick and directed a tape-to-tape pass from Gustav Forsling past Dan Vladar to cut the deficit to 3-1 at 9:54. With the secondary assist on the goal, Aaron Ekblad recorded the 200th helper of his career.
At 15:29, Brett Ritchie scored from a sharp angle to extend Calgary's lead to 4-1.
"I think every chance we gave them early, they capitalized on," Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said. "It's tough to catch up, especially when the energy isn't there. I think you want to come out -- especially on a back-to-back -- and play simple and get yourself into the game that way. I think we made it too tough on ourselves early on."
Less than two minutes after Ritchie's goal, Reinhart answered for the Panthers when he flew into the zone and beat Vladar with a wrist shot from the top of the right circle to make it 4-2 at 16:55.
With the Panthers forced to open up their game in an attempt to find some goals and close the gap in the third period, Tyler Toffoli and Mangiapane took advantage for the Flames and scored at 15:22 and 18:54, respectively, to seal the 6-2 win for Calgary.
"It's tough to dig a hole like that, for sure," Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said. "On a back-to-back you don't have the legs, but I didn't think that stopped us at the start of the second period. It's a tough challenge. I would say that they handled it as best they possibly could. The bench was right, they stayed in the fight, and nothing came easy to them tonight."
