Admin note: Long time reader/commenter Hatrick Swayze has begun an interesting startup, and it was something he reached out to me to share. It’s a great concept, so give it a read and provide some feedback for him.

First off, a big thank you to Dave and the BlueSeatBlogs team for the opportunity to share a post with the community here. HockeyHandlez is a recently developed brand / business venture which turns broken hockey sticks into beautiful 3 piece barbeque sets consisting of a fork, tongs and spatula- equipped with a bottle opener, meat tenderizer and serrated edge. All metal surfaces of the grilling components are made of non-stick stainless steel.

The idea came about when a short while back when I found myself engaged to be married and in need of a gift to present to my groomsmen. After a lot of contemplating, internet shopping and abandoning online carts prior to check out, I decided to try and convert some of my old broken hockey sticks into custom made BBQ sets (pictured above). I thought the theme worked as 5 of my 6 groomsmen grew up playing hockey and I had plenty of old lumber in my basement.

After a couple beers and a few hours in the garage, a prototype was born. Then I made another, and another- 8 in total. When it was all said and done, the bbq sets were a hit. So much so that once I returned from my honeymoon, I made a set for myself.  And now, the goal is to make sets for anyone who is a fan of the product and would like to grill in style. To me there is no beating the graphics and design of hockey sticks these days. Furthermore, we’re saving these composite sticks (which probably will never decompose) from landfills. Seems like a win-win.

Currently, our business model is twofold.

1) You can buy any stick from our inventory. Visit our Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hockeyhandlez/), Etsy or email us to pick out your favorite HockeyHandlez set. Supply varies on inventory (aka broken sticks) but we’ll make the sets as fast as we can get the sticks. Prices vary (typically $25 – $40) depending on the overall quality of the stick and whether it is a matching (all pieces from same stick/manufacturer) or mixed set (different sticks). We use skate lace as ties to hang the set on your grill- default color is white but for a $2 fee you can choose your color skate lace. (Ranger red/white/blue looks great!- check out the available SherWood R/W/B set on the Insta account) All shipping is additional.

2) You can convert a broken stick of your own into a bbq set. Just send it into us, choose your color skate lace, and we’ll turn around your own custom set. A great gift idea for yourself to cherish the memory of a stick that scored you a few special goals back in the day OR for a parent/coach/mentor who spent plenty of money/time/energy on your hockey journey.

Lastly, I wanted to ask the community to help us accumulate more broken sticks. That is our current bottleneck and it won’t change until we are able to secure some semblance of a consistent supply. To this point we’ve made strides to partner with local rinks, nhl organizations, stick manufacturers, online hockey retailers and wholesalers, etc. No stick donation is too little- we are getting by on a crowdfunding donation by committee approach until a truly sustainable opportunity comes to fruition. We’re open to any and all ideas of how to secure one, so if any of you have in roads to the big club, please reach out 😉

I certainly hope you all enjoyed the read, like our product and keep HockeyHandlez in mind for any future gift ideas. With your help we will grow one social media share at a time, one stick at a time, one bbq set sold at a time. We’re looking forward to our journey and hope to share it with as many hockey fans as possible. After all, the more hockey in the household the better!  

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