Game 7 needs no explanation for the Carolina Hurricanes. It's all or nothing at all.

Tuesday night's 2-1 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres in Game 6 made the clarity of Game 7 all the more real to the Hurricanes, who had hoped to end the series in Buffalo and move on to the Stanley Cup Finals against the Edmonton Oilers.

"Nobody is blind here," Carolina coach Peter Laviolette said. "Everybody knows what is at stake, it is a trip to the Finals. Now our back is up against the wall. It's in our building, which is where we want it to be, and we're going to be able to use the energy from our building and our fans. We need them there. We need their energy and we can draw off of that, I am sure that they will be there for us."

While visibly upset over some of the penalty calls that went against his team -- the overtime goal came on the power play -- Laviolette wasn't pleased with the way the Hurricanes played.

"We were not very good," Laviolette said. "They came out with their back against the wall, they played a real sharp first period, we didn't respond and that was disappointing because we have a lot of veteran players in there. Everybody tried to take it to the next step, we did not respond well in the first period at all.

"We're going to have to be a lot sharper than that," he said. "You know, if it weren't for Cam Ward, in that first period, it would have been a lot worse, a lot worse. And he showed up and played and that's not right. We had one of the youngest kids on the team being the best player. That's disappointing. We responded, but, you know, it cost us a goal in the first period and we pulled one out at the end, but had we showed up and played maybe it's a 1-0 game.

"Obviously, the emotions are not good," he said. "We are here to win hockey games, here to try to get to the next round. It didn't happen. We lost the game, and we'll wake up tomorrow and we'll go back to work."