What's biting the All Blacks the most is their own performance and their inability to broaden their attacking vision in the wake of Sonny Bill Williams' red card.
There was space to exploit, they just didn't see it because they were in 14-man, play it safe mode.
But there are other factors needling away at them. There is frustration that the respective ill-discipline of the two teams wasn't consistently handled by either the match officials or judiciary.
Williams' red card was a just outcome, but Mako Vunipola appeared to have two targeted attacks on Beauden Barrett, the second of which seemed to make contact with the All Blacks' first-five's head.
Yet it was a yellow card only and no further citing came. O'Brien hit Waisake Naholo with a swinging arm which left the All Blacks wing off and in need of a head injury assessment and while the flanker was cited, there has been no explanation forthcoming as to why he was exonerated and cleared to play in the decider.
"It is important for us to dump whatever happened within that 80 minutes and within those white lines," said veteran All Blacks flanker Jerome Kaino.
"Whatever happened you just have to drop it there and re-focus on what we need to do. I don't think it is within our style to drag things out and carry it on, because it hiders what you want to do. There's always going to be feeling between the two teams.
"As you saw at the weekend, both teams are quite keen to get amongst it. It was quite willing out there and discipline is a huge part of it. We are not going to go out there being cautious. We want to impose ourselves physically.
"It is an area we want to improve. We have to make sure we are on top of the discipline. We know how we can play physically within the laws."
There was also a period in the second half when the Lions - Maro Itoje - was repeatedly penalised for being offside. A case can be mounted to say it looked deliberate and therefore cynical, with the intention of stifling try scoring opportunities for the All Blacks.
It was a classic better to concede three than seven sort of mentality that the All Blacks, in hindsight, feel should have been dealt with more aggressively by Jerome Garces, with the French official at least warning the Lions they were in danger of incurring a card should the infringements not stop.
The final sore point for the All Blacks was the incident after the final whistle where Lions prop Kyle Sinckler said something particularly nasty to TJ Perenara.
All of this could simmer to the point of boiling over on Saturday but the All Blacks are going to spend this week working on a clear mindset where they must take the game to the Lions physically, but entirely within the laws.
"That's the line isn't it?" said All Blacks coach Ian Foster. "That's the beauty of these sorts of tests. There is a lot at stake and everyone is trying to impose themselves physically and it is whether you are smart enough to control that and be effective with it. That is something we work hard on and want to be able to do. We have got to make sure that we are totally under control but at the same time, we have to make sure we bring the physicality and really the two tests have been quite noticeable: [test] one is that we won that battle and [test] two is they won that battle. That shows you how important it is."
