It's a big call for coach Colin Cooper to make, but he's been around for an age and experienced enough to assess that the risk of chasing glory at all costs this week is not justified by the reward.
Hence, the expectation is that the Chiefs will try to hedge their bets by picking a weakened side this week and give them a licence to chase the game hard and to take attacking risks in a quest to accelerate the scoreboard and to leave the Hurricanes guessing about who and what they will face the following week.
They can take risks because it won't matter if they lose - there needs to be a 110-point turnaround in the differential for them to trade places with the sixth-placed Highlanders - and winning by less than 24 points leaves them in the same place as well.
By sending out a team minus Sam Cane, who is still not quite right after a head knock, Damian Mckenzie, who is being rested as part of the agreement with the All Blacks that test players should sit out two games and Sean Wainui, who has a shoulder problem, the Chiefs can retain an element of mystery about how they will set themselves up for the playoff game.
They may even make a few more changes this week to ensure there is an injection of energy next week and to give then greater potential to reconfigure tactically and structurally.
Not everyone will agree this is the way to go. There's one school of thought which says they should stuff the agreement with the All Blacks which is non-binding, play McKenzie and throw the kitchen sink at the Hurricanes to go all out this week to win that home advantage?
The historic statistics, as everyone knows, illustrate the importance of playing at home in Super Rugby playoffs. In the first 15 years, there were only eight victories for the away side in 60 games.
But since the competition expanded in 2011, the picture has changed. There have been 12 away victories in that period and since the introduction of eight team playoffs in 2016, the away team has won the quarterfinal 50 per cent of the time.
And more specifically, the Chiefs have won two away quarter-finals since 2016 and presumably have a significant degree of confidence in their ability to get the job done in Wellington.
Two other things are no doubt encouraging them in that regard. The first is that the Hurricanes have a notoriously poor record in knock-out football.
Between 1996 and 2014 they played five semi-finals and only won once. When they did make the 2006 final they lost and then again in 2015, when they had home advantage in the final, they lost.
More significantly, the Hurricanes still aren't playing that well. The Hurricanes lost three in a row before beating an ordinary Blues outfit last week and while they beat the Chiefs earlier in the year, they aren't playing with the same unstructured freedom and flow as they were.
The Hurricanes have clammed up while the Chiefs, who will welcome back Brodie Retallick this week, have found some confidence and momentum and may well be convinced that they can afford to lose this upcoming battle to win the war.
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