Tweet from @AnaheimDucks: With his team playing in a recent preseason game, @kbieksa3 went undercover with the ice crew.Here's what happened next. pic.twitter.com/KZHtPNSy6G
"There was nothing scripted," Bieksa told NHL.com. "I had full autonomy, so they just told me to do my thing."
Though the Ducks staff encouraged him to push the levels of absurdity with the character, he didn't want to blow his cover by going too far. He also didn't want to accidentally start an incident between the teams in case he needled the wrong person.
"By the third time I went, I knew a few guys from their team knew who I was," he said. "I don't think anybody from our team figured it out. I didn't want anyone to know who I was when I was on the ice. The whole point of it was to kind of turn some heads and have people kind of second-take me."
Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler got a whack on the ankle from Bieksa and his shovel. Bieksa continued to follow him around, but Fowler never reacted.
"Cam's such a nice guy; he would never say anything to a shovel boy. But the second time I went by, I could hear him say to somebody, 'What's this guy's deal'?" Bieksa said. "And I thought that was pretty funny because I know he was very irritated that that was the second time the shovel guy went after him."
He really went for it with goaltender John Gibson in a scene that wasn't shown its entirety.
"I was standing just in front of [Gibson] and I was having a loud conversation with one of the other ice guys," Bieksa said. "I was talking about him and [goaltender] Freddie Andersen and saying I couldn't believe they traded Freddie Andersen and just little things like that to see if I could get his attention and obviously putting the hand on the bum was over the line."
Even center Ryan Kesler, who did a similar video in a similar getup last season, didn't realize it was Bieksa in disguise until the team watched the video on its bus Tuesday.
