It’s time to get tougher for the Avs, or they’ll be flying home Tuesday on Nathan MacKinnon’s 25th birthday.

The Avalanche delivered a club-record 72 hits in last week’s Game 3 against the Dallas Stars — the only game Colorado has won in the series. In Sunday’s Game 4, a 5-4 loss that put the Avs on the verge of elimination, they were credited with just 36 hits — exactly half as the previous game.

A similar decline in blocked shots took place in those two games in Edmonton. Colorado blocked just nine shots Sunday, compared to 22 for the Stars, after the Avs held a 25-19 edge in Game 3.

The bottom line: Colorado must be more physical all over the ice and make more individual sacrifices when the Stars have the puck in the offensive zone if it hopes to extend the series to Wednesday’s scheduled Game 6 at Rogers Place.

Avs coach Jared Bednar, in his pregame news conference, said he expects his team to be an angry bunch Monday night based on the collective mood.

“It’s grumpy. I feel like our team has a little snarl on, which is I think a good thing,” the coach said. “I don’t think anyone’s sitting in here feeling sorry for themselves. We’ve had a discussion on how we feel the series has gone and where we are as a team. We’re just getting our minds right to get ready here tonight to start on time and get after it. I think our guys are, like I said, a little bit grumpy and a little bit angry this morning and I expect them to play that way tonight.”

As for delivering body checks, Bednar noted his team’s number was down Sunday for a variety of reasons — including the fact Dallas was far more physical at the outset and that disrupted the Avs’ ability to get up and down the ice.

“We’re known to be a puck-pressure team. We use our legs. We’re physical and hard to play against, generally, because we’re skating and using our legs,” Bednar said. “I do think our hit total was down (Sunday) because the first period we were on our heels quite a bit. Also, lots of special teams in (Sunday’s) game so you’re not running around and hitting people with that much power play and penalty kill involved.

“But we did have more bite, more grit in our game the game before, 72 hits. I don’t have a number set on it. I just want our team to play a certain way, with a certain amount of tenacity and pressure on the puck everywhere. It’s not, for me, about just laying into guys all over the place or running around looking for that to prove that we’re competitive. It’s about doing it within our system.”

Colorado played too soft in front of goalie Pavel Francouz on Sunday, something MacKinnon pointed out after the game. And the Avs aren’t blocking enough shots in the defensive zone and clearing second-chance opportunities.

“I think we’re losing that battle right now and it’s hurting us,” Bednar said. “We got to be stronger in front of the net. They’re coming in there looking for rebounds. We have to win some of those battles by body position, getting under sticks, establishing that body position early in our defending, no rest in our game down there, and then we got to collapse and clear some pucks. They’re getting too many of those rebounds.

“They’re getting bodies down there. They’ve been throwing pucks at our goalie and try and bang away. There’s chances where we can make life on our goalies a little bit easier.

“As D-men there’s things we can do to make it tougher on them, for sure.”