LAS VEGAS — Off nights in Las Vegas are precious commodities in the NHL: a chance to have a really nice meal, to throw some money around in the high-roller areas of the casinos and blow off a little of the steam that builds up in the pressure cooker of the world’s most demanding hockey league. We may be several years removed from the days when a few beers counted as proper pregame nutrition and players would roll out to a bar or a club 10 or 15 strong the night before a game, but there are still plenty of ways for the young and rich to have a good time in the city of sin.

But what do you when that off night in Vegas comes just hours before Game 4 of the Western Conference final, when you’re down 3-0 in the series having just thrown away a 3-0 first-period lead and possibly your entire season? Do you still go out? Do you hang out by the pool and try to calm your chattering mind? Do you sit in your hotel room and stare at the walls, sulking or fuming or meditating or conjuring up a game face?

“The most important thing is that we’re together as a team,” Colorado Avalanche defenseman Sam Malinski said. “Just having dinner together. I guess just do whatever. Everyone’s different. Do what you need to get your body and mind ready for (Game 4).”

Well, maybe a well-lubricated night of revelry on the Strip would help at this point. “Playing guilty,” as Vegas Golden Knights coach John Tortorella — one of the last old-school bench bosses around — has frequently, and lovingly, described it over the years. The Avalanche are so far inside their own heads after their dream season collapsed all around them in a five-day span that they might not find their way out until training camp in September.

Spend enough time around NHL teams, particularly this time of year, and you get pretty good at discerning the true mindset of a team. Especially the championship teams. There’s a defiance that underscores everything they do, especially when things are snowballing in the wrong direction. They don’t sulk, they stiffen. They don’t sink, they rise. They relish the challenge of overcoming a deficit, of beating the odds. There’s an I’ll-show-you element that the mentally toughest teams bring to every game, but especially the must-wins.

The Avalanche have to find that will, that righteous fury, whether it’s out on the Strip or deep in the recesses of their minds. Because it wasn’t there — not in their game, not in their words, not in the tenor of their voices, not in their body language — during and after Sunday night’s collapse in Game 3, or the following morning at the team hotel.

This is a team lost at sea, the wave of emotion from seeing Nathan MacKinnon barely able to skate after taking a Shea Theodore slap shot to the knee all but sweeping them away.

Defenseman Josh Manson at least tried to spin it with a little positivity.

“It’s a big challenge, but I think it’s one that you’ve got to be excited for, right?” Manson said Monday morning. “You win one game, and you think you can get the ball rolling a bit. I think it writes a fun story if you look at it that way. If you look at it like, ‘Oh, this is too tough of a mountain’ or whatever it may be, you already have that negative talk. You have to look at it in a positive light of what this could be, and how we are going to accomplish the goal.”

But the Avs seemed focused on the wrong things. Head coach Jared Bednar and Manson both were still stewing on the missed interference call on Keegan Kolesar (he plowed into Manson as Manson was backpedaling in transition) that directly preceded Kolesar’s game-tying goal in the second period of Game 3. Bednar, as he has been since the end of Game 1, kept pointing out that the underlying metrics of the series are dead even or in favor of the Avalanche, insisting they’re playing well enough to win. His players echoed the sentiment, the night of Game 3 and the morning after. It’s going to be fine. Keep it up.

It sounded like they were trying to convince themselves as much as anything.

It’s been clear to anyone watching this series that Colorado has been shockingly fragile, reeling at the slightest pushback by the Golden Knights. Even after a brilliant first period in Game 3, the Avalanche were put immediately on their heels by Mark Stone’s power-play goal 19 seconds into the second. Whatever Vegas wanted, Vegas did.

All season long, as the Avalanche rolled over the rest of the league, they’ve been able to get that extra goal, that extra save, to put them over the top. Not in this series, though. Not against Vegas. It was less than two weeks ago that the Avalanche rallied from their own 3-0 deficit to stun the Minnesota Wild in a decisive Game 5, MacKinnon scoring the equalizer and Brett Kulak potting the winner in a contest for the ages. Seems like a lifetime ago now. Where’s that bottomless resolve now?

Bednar said all three games against Vegas were “one-play games,” where one hero moment makes all the difference. Asked if he was surprised that his team hasn’t been able to supply any of those moments, Bednar couldn’t deny it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I knew from watching Vegas that this was going to be a really difficult series. I don’t look at their season and go, ‘This team has only finished with X amount of points.’ You look at their finishes, you look at the way they’re playing, you look at the way they’re built deep down the middle, lots of explosive firepower, playoff-proven guys that won the year after we won — they’re very similar teams. You knew it was going to be a battle. (But) to this point in the year, to the start of this series, we’ve always been able to sort of make that next play, make one more play than the other team to carve out victories. To have it go the other way three games in a row…”

Bednar trailed off a moment, contemplating the disappointment.

“This is sports,” he went on. “It doesn’t shock me. It does surprise me a little bit.”

The Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning are the teams of the decade, with a pair of Stanley Cups each. But no team has been better in the 2020s than the Avalanche under Bednar, with 732 standings points since the start of the 2019-20 season. And it was just four years ago that captain Gabriel Landeskog skated the Stanley Cup around Tampa’s Amalie Arena. But history suggests this Colorado team doesn’t have the mental mettle of some of its championship brethren.

As Aarif Deen of Colorado Hockey Now points out, this modern incarnation of the Avalanche — the one coached by Bednar and led by Landeskog, MacKinnon and Cale Makar — has never rallied from a series deficit beyond 1-0. They’re 0-5 when trailing 2-1; 0-4 when tied 2-2; and 0-7 when trailing 3-2. They’ve lost all four Game 7s in which they’ve played, including last year’s absolutely gutting loss to Dallas, when Mikko Rantanen, of all people, singlehandedly erased a 2-0 third-period deficit with a third-period hat trick.

As good as the Avalanche have been, they just haven’t been terribly resilient. So to rally from a 3-0 deficit against a team like Vegas — one that has shown that kind of toughness and resilience over the years — is going to take something special, something new.

And the injury situation doesn’t help. Bednar had no updates on the lower-body injuries suffered by MacKinnon and Valeri Nichushkin in the second period of Game 3. MacKinnon returned for four gutsy third-period shifts after blocking that Theodore clapper with his right knee, but was a shell of his usual self. It feels like short of amputation, MacKinnon will play in Game 4. But how effective will he be? And how will any limitations on his play affect his teammates mentally and emotionally?

“I’ve been here 10 years, and I’ve seen Nate lay on the ice twice, OK?” Bednar said. “It’s not a great feeling for our team. For him to be able to come back out, get some work done late in the second period and intermission, and be able to come out and even help us on the power play and empty-net situations — if that’s all he can do, we’ll take it. It’s better than anything else, in my opinion, we can put on the ice. It just shows his character and leadership and desire to win.”

Nobody doubts Colorado’s desire to win. But its character is being tested, and its leader might be severely diminished. If the Avalanche are going to keep their dream season alive, it’s going to take something we’ve never seen before from this group.

“We still have a chance,” Brock Nelson said — quietly, not defiantly. “So you talk about enjoying the process, enjoying the work, and putting that all first. Just going out there and laying it on the line for one another in the room. I think (those are) the moments that you kind of dream about, having these opportunities to do something special.”