The way I would enable similar behaviour with the templating system would be to have an ad_page_contract in your master.tcl file:
ad_page_contract {
} {
{print_p:notnull,optional f}
}
then at the end of the master.tcl you can ad_return_template with either the printable version or the standard version.
if {[string equal $print_p "t"]} {
ad_return_template "master-print"
} else {
ad_return_template "master"
}