DENVER -- The Colorado Avalanche's biggest task? After applying a seventh-game urgency to Wednesday night's Game 6 against the Red Wings in Denver, but losing, they have to tell themselves:

Never mind. No big deal.

And they have to believe it.

"We're going to battle until the last second and we're going to Detroit with the firm intention of coming back here for Game 1 of the finals," Colorado coach Bob Hartley said after the Wings' series-tying 2-0 victory Wednesday night.

Suddenly, though, the Avalanche seem in dire straits, and this is the rare instance of not overreacting to the outcome of a single game.

The Avalanche were two lines and a prayer to start with, but now that the injuries are mounting, they're more like two lines and the Hershey Bears.

Dan Hinote, Mike Keane and Alex Tanguay almost certainly will miss Game 7, as they missed Game 6. Stephane Yelle suffered what the Avalanche said was a neck strain when nailed by Steve Duchesne in the second period. Duchesne, who appeared to get Yelle with his shoulder, but also a glove to the face, wasn’t penalized for the hit. Yelle’s head struck the ice when he fell. He didn’t return to the game, and while there was no immediate word on his status for Game 7, it seems at least possible he won’t play, either.

Plus, there is the issue of mentally having to change gears from what was their understandable approach going into Game 6. They were saying that had to consider it an issue of win-or-else desperation.

The core of the team still remembered how home ice suddenly became advantageous for the Stars in seventh games at Dallas in the Western Conference finals in 1999 and 2000, and how the Avalanche mantra after that became trying to ensure that any seventh games would be played in a Denver barn. The biggest missed opportunity, the Avs said over and over, came when they failed in a chance to close out the Stars in Game 6 of the 1999 Western Conference finals at home.

Plus, the Avalanche themselves have reasserted home-ice control in Game 7s against Los Angeles (twice), New Jersey and San Jose in the 2001 and 2002 playoffs.

They heard the Devils lament that they, too, had really lost a series -- in this case, last year's Stanley Cup finals -- when they didn't win a Game 6 at home against the Avalanche.

But now the Avalanche are getting right back on the charter flight Thursday, heading back to the land of the octopi for a winner-gets-the-Hurricanes Game 7.

To have any shot at all, they must convince themselves that they haven't let the Wings off the hook, and Patrick Roy must get beyond denial long enough to get angry over his latest gaffe.

Roy apparently indulged in a bit of grandstanding, trying to show off the puck after stopping a Steve Yzerman shot. He lost control, allowing Brendan Shanahan an easy tap-in for the first goal Wednesday night.

"I thought I had the puck, and I made a great save on Yzerman," Roy said. "I thought I had it in my glove, I was looking for the puck. I guess it just rolled under me and they put it in."

That they did. It was the first time in the series Detroit scored the first goal of the game, and this time, it held up.

Game 7 is the ultimate "money" game, of course, so perhaps this is a fitting climax to a series involving Roy's attempt to refortify his image as the goaltender hockey men would want in the crease if their lives depended on the outcome of one three-period, high-tension, high-stakes night.

And down in the other crease?

Dominik Hasek, who has all those regular-season trophies on his resume -- Hart, Vezina -- and an Olympic gold medal in a business that sometimes treats them as if they are roughly as valuable as Confederate currency in 1881.

Hasek needed to step up and steal a monumental stakes playoff game before he had the right to pop off about the play in front of him, and that's pretty close to what he did in Game 6. He had 24 saves, but he made the big, acrobatic ones when they mattered, and he helped avoid what would have an ignominious and recrimination-triggering series loss for a team built with two goals in mind -- beating Colorado and winning the Stanley Cup.

Does Colorado have a chance Friday?

Of course.

This road-warrior series has seen the team in the darker uniforms win four times in six games, and it even has included what might never happen again in the NHL -- two spleenless Swedes (Fredrik Olausson and Peter Forsberg) scoring overtime goals to give their teams wins away from home.

The Colorado elite talent still is capable of making the sort of superlative, breathtaking plays that can turn a game -- whether that means Forsberg writing another remarkable chapter in his comeback story; Joe Sakic beating Hasek with a wrist shot (or two); Chris Drury coming up with another "winning" play; Rob Blake overcoming what now is known to be the hand-area injury that has accompanied his leg problem; or Roy simply saying, all right, that's enough, and erecting an impenetrable plane in front of the Colorado net.

But against a team with so much talent, and with an elite goalie of its own, the reality probably is that Colorado probably has gotten the most out of a drastically tiered roster -- just to get to a seventh game against a better team.

Yes, anything can happen in a Game 7.

But that includes running head-on into the law of averages.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.