The Beer Leaguer

The podcast for the discerning beer league hockey player. We cover all things adult recreational hockey from folks that never played professionally, but just want to have fun and get a little better every game.

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The Beer Leaguer

3D Printing for Hockey?

September 30, 2025 • The Beer Leaguer • Season 2 • Episode 23

If you’ve ever wondered whether 3D printers can do more for hockey than crank out flexi-dragons, this episode is for you. We break down what not to print (pucks, targets, protective gear), and share practical beer-league-ready ideas: stickhandling aids, blade wraps, bottle carriers, gear organizers, SKÅDIS wall setups, and Sparx storage. There is even some cool uses for broken-sticks and a few just-for-fun prints that will look awesome in your hockey cave.

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Music by RomaRecord1973 via Pixabay

The Beer Leaguer (00:00.13)
This is the audio of a video that I recently put out. don't like leaving any of loyal podcast listeners out, but I really think if you want to get the most out of this, like actually getting to see the stuff that I'm talking about, go check out the video. I have a link for that in the show notes. Now I've also gone ahead and put images to some of these things as chapter markers. So if your podcast player supports those, you can also check that out as always. Thanks for listening.

The Beer Leaguer (00:35.63)
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Beer Leaguer Podcast. This time, talk to all about 3D printing. I've spent a lot of hours scouring 3D print file repositories for hockey related prints, and then even more hours printing out a lot of these things just to see how, if, and which things are useful. So in this episode, I'm going to show you the good, the bad.

and the sometimes just plain weird, but cool stuff that I found. Okay, to kind of set the stage for when I say 3D printing, what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the very hobbyist, the cheap 3D printers that people have, not some of the crazy stuff that people can do, not stuff that is like industrial, you know, style 3D printers that are out there. I'm talking about that. I'm talking about the stuff you can...

go online by for fairly cheaper, even go buy in a retail store if people actually do that. And, you know, print with pretty regular kind of materials. There are different types of materials out there. There's a whole plethora of things. I'm not going to get into that. There's there's tons of information out there. If you want to know more specifically about 3D printing and how to make certain things and stuff like that. This is for the very basic 3D printing.

So if you're somebody that you have a 3D printer and you've been using it to, you know, make stuff around the house, or maybe some of your family has a 3D printer and they've been using it for things and you're wondering, hey, can I do something cool? it the thought just making fidget spinners or desk organizers? Why do some hockey related? Cause you love hockey. Obviously that's why you're here. So yeah, that's what we're to be talking about. So right off the rip, there are certain things that I think are just not going to work with 3D printing.

at home as it stands now. printing any kind of like stick blades or sticks or anything like that. Can you print them? Yes. Can you print them in kind of strong ish materials? Yes. And there's not going to last though. There's not going to hold up to the wear and tear of playing hockey. you know, might it work for a little bit? Might it work for something around the house? If you want, know, if you're playing like knee hockey or something, sure. Totally work for that.

The Beer Leaguer (02:55.832)
But not for playing actual hockey. I, I don't think I'd even while they're trying that it's just not going to go well. same thing with like pucks. There's tons of people out there that have things for printing, hockey pucks. was there full pucks wonder like little air pucks where they're like a mesh design. Again, something like that. If you want to have something to knock around, you know, with like the kids or something.

And you don't want to have, you know, like the foam pucks for whatever reason, or you don't have any use. Have a 3d printer. can, you can throw that on. Sure. Works great for that. If you want to have something that you can use to display things with, and you want to puck the display. Yes. But for any kind of actual hockey playing, no, not going to work. Shooting targets. Same thing. Super easy to print. You can make a lot of cool looking ones, but as soon as you hit them with any kind of shot, they're probably going to break.

You know, so again, not really there for that home printing stuff yet. I'm sure eventually it will, but not really there yet. And finally, and hopefully this goes without saying anything that is supposed to be protective. So I would not print any protective stuff for you or anything that's, know, to fix some of your protective gear. Like don't, you know, print the missing, you know, earflap from your helmet or something like that. It's not going to work right. No, it might fit.

but it's not going to protect you. So any of that kind of stuff? No, just I would say don't.

The Beer Leaguer (04:29.198)
for the okay. all that out of the way, what actually is 3d printing for those of you that don't know what 3d printing is the very basic way that I can explain it is. the best way I can explain to someone that doesn't know what 3d printing is think of getting to print with plastic caulk, but it's really, really thin.

It's kind of like that. I think that's the easiest explanation I can give for it. That's the most basic way of 3D printer.

That's kind of the most basic way that 3d printing works. So it gives you an idea of how stuff is kind of built and put together. there's different materials you can use. There's very basic plastics. There's plastics infused with different things. They can get difficult to print. They can be easy to print. Like I said, in the beginning, there is a whole world out there. If you want to get into this, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about very basic stuff that you can do.

With all of that being said, do beer leaguers actually need a 3d printer? No. But is there still interesting, useful, cool stuff that you can print?

Yeah. I said no, then this would be a really, really short episode. Yes, there is all sorts of cool stuff you can print that is beer league or hockey related. I'm going to go through some of the things that I have found online, stuff that I've printed, what I've liked, what I haven't liked, the way I'm going to do it and break stuff down into three distinct categories. One things that can actually solve a hockey problem.

The Beer Leaguer (06:19.438)
So not necessarily something for beer league, but some sort of hockey problem that you might have that can be solved with 3d printing to stuff. That's just cool. Maybe not really practical, but just cool, which I'd say honestly is most 3d prints. And then finally stuff that I think is interesting and cool, but is also actually really practical and useful for beer league. All right. So things that are solving a problem for hockey, they're not necessarily beer.

There is tons of files out there for fixing stuff with a 3d printer. It is a great way to. Fix little bits of machinery. guess the best way to put it that is out there that you might not have access to otherwise. so in hockey terms, I see a lot of this for like bubble hockey for people that have, know, like the gears or the stick or some part of the mechanism that turns the little bubble hockey player, something like that.

People have tons of printable files out there for all those various aspects. So if you need to repair something, or if you just want to have, know, guys with like different colored sticks or something like that, or different little colored hockey guys out there in your bubble hockey game, tons of files out there for fixing those things. And I'd imagine it's way easier to print up something like that than to try and buy those pieces parts and probably way quicker too. Another thing sort of similar to that.

Air hockey stuff. So lots of printable stuff out there for the pucks, the discs. I guess you'd call them pucks for air hockey. they're not going to last great probably because the ones that you actually get with air hockey are pretty heavy duty. But if you're in a pinch and you need one same thing with the, don't know what you'd call them, the paddles that you use for air hockey. Same thing that you can find lots of printable stuff for that. Very similar to like bubble hockey. If you need stuff to fix those things or replacements.

can find them and it's probably not a bad way to go. Another thing that I think it's a cool thing and it solves an issue that a lot of people have puck displays. There are so many different types of puck displays out there. I have one here in the background that kind of does like a little triangle of pucks.

The Beer Leaguer (08:44.12)
Pointing it out to everybody that's on video.

The Beer Leaguer (08:49.006)
Right there. That's the one that is the one that I particularly like. I think it looks really cool, but there is tons of those for displaying pucks, you know, on your desk, having things you can put up on the wall, all sorts of stuff like that for displaying pucks, one puck, five pucks, however many bucks you have different configurations of them. Lots of great options out there for that. Same thing with sticks.

The Beer Leaguer (09:13.61)
Lots of ways to hang sticks on the wall. some of them, you know, you can screw them in, you can use some of those like command strips or whatever, and they're all very easy to use. I'll just kind of clip onto a stick in different ways and let you hang a stick up very easily on the wall, you know, for displaying purposes. So lots of different versions of that to kind of accommodate whatever you want. So. Like those are super useful and a super cool thing that you can easily 3d print.

No print as many as you want, whatever color you want. You can find them out there. another thing that I have seen is for when you have jerseys hung on a hanger, like I have right behind me, thought this was a weird thing until I kind of saw it is little printed shoulder caps for the Jersey. So the jerseys hang a little bit nicer and they look nicer when they're hung up.

Especially if you have kind of like wire hangers or smaller hangers like that. Hockey jerseys can look really weird when they're hung up. And if you them hung up for display and you want them to look nice, there's little like end cap things you put on the hanger. know it sounds weird. Go check it out. it's little end caps to go on the hanger and kind of lift up the shoulders. They looks nicer in a display. If you're hanging jerseys, lots and lots of team branded things. I mean, just about anything you want team branded.

Uh, phone holders, pucks, ornaments, all kinds of stuff that's team branded. So, you know, if you just want to have a hockey themed desk, you can get all that stuff. And it's not that hard to put your team's logo on these things. They don't just have to be pro teams. can be your team's logo on a lot of these things. Another one that I thought was really cool was printing out little hockey guys.

for the purposes of coaching. So think of something similar to like bubble hockey players, but more along the lines of like little green army men, little hockey players like that, they have people's positions on them. And obviously you can print them in different colors. So if you want each team to be a different color, or if you want, you know, your defenseman to be one color and afford a different color or whatever, print those guys out and using those for showing stuff when you're coaching, know, showing.

The Beer Leaguer (11:38.684)
plays and ozone responsibilities or whatever. thought that was a really neat thing that I saw. I never would have thought of that. And then another thing that I think is really cool is kind of of the first thing more stick holders, but this being a little bit different, this is not like to display hockey sticks. This is something you would attach, you know, to your wall or wherever you have kind of your hockey stuff. So you don't just have your sticks laying against things. That's a nice little thing to snap your hockey sticks in.

keeps them, you know, in place where they, where you want them, they're not falling over, you know, cool little contraption. Again, not something essential to have, but a cool thing. And one of those things, if you have a 3d printer at your disposal and you know, you keep your hockey sticks somewhere that they can get knocked over and you want them a little bit better out of the way. Totally cool, totally useful thing to have the next category. Stuff that I think is cool. It might not be the most practical of things though, but

stuff that I think is totally worth printing out. One of which these little guys here, these little

Maori heads Easter Island heads looking guys, but they're hockey guys Useful. No, but is a fun little decoration. Yes. Well, I have this in the background of probably most of these videos Yes along those same lines Little goalie helmets You know, you can get these whatever color print them whatever color you want. You can paint them yourself put stickers whatever It's a fun little thing Useful probably not cool. I think so

Another one I think is kind of cool. Totally not useful, but a neat kind of decoration to have one of these. looks like puck going through and shattering glass. You know, you put this on a wall or on a window or something like that. It's kind of silly. They sell these kinds of things in stores, but you can just print it yourself and put that up. I think it's a neat thing. Other fun ideas of things that I've seen that are maybe more practical, but not that practical, but still pretty cool trophies.

The Beer Leaguer (13:48.786)
putting out trophies, know, for bringing trophies for like your kids team or something like that. Yes. So could print out really nice ones for everybody or certain people or very specific trophies for things for a kid's team or for your barely team. If you want to go out trophies for hilarious things that people have done, that that would totally be a thing that you could do. You know, if you wanted to have a trophy that you give out after every game.

You could have something like that. If you want to do at the end of the year, kind of do some sort of thing for people. And instead of just giving a generic trophy, print up trophies that have funny things on them. is something you could totally do. Bag tags. So if you need a bag tag, you know, maybe you're traveling or a bunch of guys have the same bag and you just want to make sure that, know, which one is yours. You print a bag tag. It could be custom colors, be printed with your name and number on it. So you don't have to write it out. It could have your team logo on it.

Whatever again, cool thing. Not the most practical probably, but still cool. Lockroom nameplates.

I think that's self-explanatory.

If you record any of your games with like a GoPro or any other action camera, and you need a specific mount to put the camera somewhere, 3d printing is a great way to go. Now I wouldn't 3d print something that you're going to put on yourself to play or on your helmet or something like that, because I just don't think it's sturdy enough. But if you have cameras that are like behind the goal and you want them held at a certain angle or something like that, or if you want to have like two cameras and pointed in a certain way, and you can't find exactly what you want.

The Beer Leaguer (15:28.11)
tons of action camera mounts out there. Easy to 3D print. Pretty cool. Not super hockey practical, maybe more life practical, but totally a thing you could do. Not hard to find those.

And finally, one of the more fun things that I think I have done for my team that we got 3d printed was they call these drip chains. I think is, the right term for them. And it's something that we give around every game to player of the game. And it's a fun thing, you know, kind of similar to what I was saying with trophies. And it's a pretty easy thing to print or to get somebody to print.

for you. And it's just a fun kind of goofy thing. Again, not the most practical thing, but it's cool. You know, it's a fun thing to have and really supposed to be fun. Something else I saw a lot of different versions of out there was things to do with broken sticks. So if you have sticks that are broken, that you can't use for whatever reason, you know, they snapped in half or the blade just broke or whatever.

different things you can do with those all kinds of different connectors and things to have to do with that. Two of the things that really stuck out to me and thank you to the two viewers that let me know that these are two things that they actually use a lot. One is hangers. So people printing hangers, like a clothes hanger that connects pieces of broken hockey sticks together to make the hanger.

That's kind of a cool hanger, especially if you have a place where you keep your hockey Jersey. think that'd be a really cool hanger for your hockey Jersey to have off to the side of something a little bit different. And then also picture frames. So taking four pieces of broken stick sticks are pretty easy to cut. I mean, I guess you can go buy a new stick if you really want to take pieces of stick and having connectors that turn it into a picture frame. That would make a great frame. Again, if you have kids that play hockey or something, obviously it'd be great for that.

The Beer Leaguer (17:39.736)
picture of your kid playing hockey, but in a beer league context, have a picture of your team from you guys winning something or after your first season or just a fun picture of your team. When I put in a hockey stick frame, nice way to display it. And another one that I saw kind of a lot of, and honestly didn't really think anything of it. And then as I saw more and more, I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Was funny hockey signs.

So signs that you know, you see like hockey fan parking only, or before not home, we're probably at hockey or I'd rather be playing hockey, you know, all those kinds of funny signs that you see out there things that are, you know, super quick to print and super easy to design. So that's the other thing you can have some kind of cool ones, put your team logo on there or whatever, you know, have stuff like that. It's a lot of stuff like that. That's, you know, fun to have.

Just kind of around if you have a man cave or something like that, or in your background, like you'll see in the background, have different stuff that I have 3d printed that, you know, not really practical other than it looks cool. You know, put smile on your face. And finally, the third category, things that I think are actually cool, but also totally useful for beer leaguers.

First up hockey blade wraps. You know, things that you wrap around your hockey blade, if you're going to practice like in your driveway or something like that. So it's kind of the sacrificial lamb for your stick. So your stick doesn't get all torn up. There are nice ones that are out there that you can buy, but you can print them for real cheap. Will they get chewed up and destroyed kind of quickly? Yes. Will they get chewed up and destroyed quicker than the ones you buy in the store?

I'll say probably about the same, probably a little faster, but they're going to be way cheaper. So I think that's a cool thing that you could print out and is totally useful along a similar line. If you guys have ever seen the stick handling tool that just goes over your hockey stick and it's for your top hand to hold onto. And the idea is it keeps your top hand very loose. So it is not tightly gripping the stick.

The Beer Leaguer (19:55.106)
The cheap way of doing this is getting like a toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll and doing the same thing, but you can totally print one those. You can also print something that just kind of sits in your glove and doesn't let you grip the stick hard enough. And the fact that it is kind of breakable is probably good because you don't want to be gripping it hard. That's the whole point of it. I think that is a very useful thing to print and very practical for hockey purposes.

Uh, another one is puck or water bottle carriers. If you need to carry a couple of those just, and you don't want to just throw them in your bag. And if you have a couple of water bottles and you have trouble carrying a couple of water bottles, cause it's the pain in butt to carry those. If you don't want to throw them in your bag, you can print carrier that does that. You're going to carry her for, you know, if you bring water bottles for the whole team. So if you need that super easy thing to do, super easy thing to print and because you're 3d printing it yourself.

You can do it every kind of colors you like, configuration you like stuff like that. Slap your logo on there if you want, you know, make it look cool. Lots and lots of stuff out there for gear organizers or gear holders. So like things that hold tape or organized tape, if you have it somewhere, you know, however you want to have it. So if you want to have a little box for your tape or something that's specifically made to hold rolls of tape, it's like shaped like tape. You can find tons and tons of stuff out there like that.

If you want to keep your stuff a little bit more organized than maybe just having it sitting out on a countertop or thrown in a drawer or something, you can totally find things like that. Lots of cool ideas. One thing that is really big in 3d printing, apparently that I don't really get why is it's an Ikea wall organizer system called scatis skatis. S K a S K a D I S.

I know it's an IKEA thing. I don't know how you pronounce it. And that's just like a wall organizer with slots on it. Instead of being like a pegboard, there is lots and lots of gear organizers for those. So if you actually want to have a way to hang up your gear after games and dry it nicely, and don't want to invest in any kind of gear hanger, or you want to have one of those PVC hockey hangers that a lot of people have, but you have a free wall space. You can print out hangers for.

The Beer Leaguer (22:20.542)
All your different pieces of gear to hang on one or two of those boards and have a really convenient and easy way to hang your gear up. Be very obvious when you pack your bag. If stuff is still hanging there, so you don't forget things. So again, totally practical print thing. Another thing that I think it's kind of cool. Can be practical, maybe just kind of a fun thing. I'm not sure you decide is the little plugs for the end of your stick.

Now you can print these just plain and just have a plain black one. Like every stick has, or you can print one with your name and number on it or your team logo or some cool design that you want. I know a lot of people really like having the plug in their stick and these can fall out. So if you need one pretty easy thing to print. And finally, the thing that I think is the most practical, most useful.

And kind of, I guess the best thing I think that you can print for hockey related stuff on your 3d printer.

stick handling aids. There's so many different styles of these and the fact that you're able to print them yourself. You can configure them in all kinds of different ways, make as many or as few as you want.

These are things that are generally kind of expensive to buy for what they are. And they shouldn't really be taking a ton of abuse. Now, most of these things, because I've just 3d printed them on like a flat surface, are they going to work great on ice? No, I'd want to do some kind of like pull little spikes on the bottom or something to get the new better on ice. But if you're practicing, you know, in your driveway, in your house, something like that, these are perfect for it. I'm gonna show you a couple of my favorites.

The Beer Leaguer (24:12.04)
One is this kind of cool design, these little like half traffic cones that have slots in them that are perfect also for a way to use a broken stick. These things are great for if you have broken sticks.

The Beer Leaguer (24:30.136)
Just kind of drop your stick into these and you can put them in different configurations. Like I said, as many as you want, because you're printing them, you can make them taller, shorter, whatever you want to do. I think they're really cool. Very similar to those. Are these stick handling aids that kind of look like cup holders in all honesty, and they work kind of the same. just put sticks either right into the end and you can put them through them.

or put a couple of sticks in here and yeah, you can configure them however you want. Again, you're printing them. So this is when having the ability to change the height on these or change how many sticks can go into them. You can really kind of get crazy with your configurations for them. I think these are really nice and the kind of thing that I think is not just useful to print for beer leaguers, but since a lot of beer leaguers also, you know, have kids that play or coach kids, these are things that really easily stack together.

You can throw in your bag, take them with you and have stick handling aids kind of at all times.

The Beer Leaguer (25:36.662)
And the last one, the stick handling aids that I really, really like.

Is that you've probably seen these before. It's just a couple of links of, mean, it's just plastic, a couple of links of plastic that you have connected together that you can kind of put in any kind of configuration you want. So if you want to do like a straight line and just stick handle, you know, zigzag through them, if you want to do it into some sort of like semi square or hexagon pattern and you know, stick handle through those, you can do that too. And that's my favorite design of any of stick handling aids.

Because I think it gives you the most options of things to do. And because it's self-contained, you don't have to have an extra stick or broken stick to use with it. It's all by itself. There's lots of different training videos and things out there to show how to come up with ideas to use something like that for. And again, because you're printing it yourself, you can make those links as long as short as you want, as tall or as short as you want. And you can make the parts in all different colors. If you like. I know there's at least one commercial, one of those out there.

And one of the big selling points for is the different sections are different colors and they have like an app you can use that flash the color and you're supposed to watch the app. So your head stays up and stick handle through the proper color. You could remake that at home very, very easily. And again, you can make them different links, different heights, because you control that. That is my favorite of the practical 3d prints, similar to the organizers for your gear. Lots of stuff.

for the sparks sharpener, a good amount of things out there for organizing your spark stuff. Cause if you have a sparks, you probably have a lot of accessories for it. So there's a lot of different cool ones out there that you can get. There is just little standalone organizers that sit on top of your sparks and you can put all your accessories in. So they're all in one spot, you know, or put off to the side on your desk, wherever you have. So you have them in one area. There's also organizing systems that you can use.

The Beer Leaguer (27:36.546)
without getting real deep into the weeds of 3d printing. There's something called grid finity, which is an organization system for drawers and they have spark supplies for that. And these are little drop in sparks organizers that go on this grid that you print. And if you have your sparks, you know, on some kind of a bench that has drawers, you want to keep things in the drawers organized. can print these. have mine in a little mini toolbox.

That holds all of my sparks stuff. So I can just have that say on top of the sparks. Everything's there. Everything's easy to get to. Everything's easy to see. It's a really nice way to handle all the different things that you need to have. If you own a sparks machine, one of the things I really like about 3d printing is you can print stuff to solve your own problems. So one of the things that I have is I'm usually carrying a lot of stuff in with me to games and.

It's just a pain to carry all that stuff. And don't want to have to make multiple trips. usually do. And my hockey sticks, I can just kind of throw on my bag, but a lot of times carrying my bag in, they fall off because I'm like trying to get through doorways and everything like that. So I thought, what if I could attach my sticks to my bag? Like some bags have, but my bag doesn't. So kind of combined a couple of different things that I've seen and gone through a couple of iterations.

The Beer Leaguer (29:05.068)
making these. These are things that go on to my hockey bag strap and then hold the sticks.

Is it something I need? No. Is it practical for everyone? No. Does it solve a very specific annoyance of mine? Yes. So that's kind of a cool thing to do with a 3d printer, right? Hockey related. I think so. So do you need a 3d printer if you're playing barely hockey? Obviously not. Should you run out and get a 3d printer to print stuff for barely hockey?

Probably not. But if you have a 3d printer or access to one, there's obviously a ton of cool stuff you can print. Some of it, like I showed, just fun stuff. Some of it totally useful hockey related. Some of it actually useful for you playing hockey to help you get better at it. So by no means was this an exhaustive list of every hockey related 3d printable item, but hopefully gives you an idea of some of the stuff that is out there.

So if you have a 3d printer or you know, somebody that does, and you were looking for some things to print on it because really you just don't want to print another one those little flexy dragons that everybody prints. Hopefully this gives you some ideas or some inspiration for stuff that you can do. I highly recommend printing some of these things out. It's really cool to be able to make your own things for hockey. You know, it's just a fun thing to do. So thanks everyone for the suggestions for some of these items.

If you have some 3d printed things that you have used and you have liked, I'd love to hear about it. You can drop a comment, send a text to the show or an email to the show. I'd love to hear about them as always. Thanks a lot for listening, everyone. Catch you in the next one.