"It was a tough hit in a tough situation, and so when you're asked (to fight) you go," Eberle said.

Kraken forward Yanni Gourde, who often pesters opponents into wanting to punch him, said not all situations call for dropping gloves.

"If a guy previously asked somebody to fight and gets the guy to drop his gloves and then he doesn't drop them ... that looks really bad," Gourde said. "But if someone drops his gloves and is ready to fight but the other guy doesn't want it, then that's just how it goes sometimes.

"It happens a lot when you're in a scrum," he added. "One guy thinks you want to go, but the other guy doesn't think he's going and so, it is what it is."

Gourde said even "turtling" can be acceptable if a much bigger player goes after a smaller one without reason. "You're not just going to go and eat punches and maybe get hurt," he said.

Unless, of course, the player was asking for it by committing some transgression. "If you did something wrong, then own up to it — don't turtle," he said. "You own up to your stuff. You man up and you face the repercussions of your actions. That's how hockey rule is. The unwritten rules. If you don't want to do it (fight) then don't go starting stuff."

Gourde, at only 5 foot 9, 174 pounds, is aware of his well-cultivated pest reputation and how his aggressive forechecking gets on nerves. He accepts he'll need to drop his gloves — even against much bigger guys — if he pushes too many buttons.

One of those bigger opponents was 6-foot-1, 215-pound Los Angeles Kings forward Brendan Lemieux — son of Claude "The Turtle" Lemieux — early last season. Gourde hadn't done much to provoke the fight. But he'd finished a hard check a beat or two after Lemieux had gotten rid of the puck late in a game the Kraken were handily winning.

"If somebody asks me to go and I did something wrong, I'm always going," Gourde said. "I don't shy away from it."

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Editor's note: This is the latest in an occasional series on the unwritten rules of hockey.

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