Hockey isn’t just a sport in Minnesota, it’s a lifestyle, a language and a love affair.

In the State of Hockey, family heirlooms in the form of sweaty pads, traveling trophies, hockey hair and jersey numbers are the norm. Our state tournament draws bigger crowds than some NHL games and more players go to the pros than any other state in the nation.

The game seeps into our communities, our vocabularies and even our gardens. In South Minneapolis, one yard boasts hockey-grown tomatoes, with green vines hugging a sawed-off Bauer stick.

Needless to say, it’s difficult to escape the influence of the sport: Throw a biscuit (a puck) and you’ll likely hit solid, skateable ice in the land of 10,000 rinks.

But what, and more importantly who, makes Minnesota high school hockey so special?

My name is Olivia Hicks and I’m on a mission to uncover the most unexpected stories in the game. I joined the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Strib Varsity desk in October as a high school sports reporter after covering Formula 1 racing for the past two years.

Despite their differences — one all jet-black tarmac and the other ice —hockey and auto racing have a few things in common. Both have a similar rhythm of objects crashing and clashing in a precarious tango. Both rely on performance margins: the points and borrowed seconds that separate the good from the great. And both are modernizing and changing.

I’ll be writing about that shift here in Minnesota this season as I tackle high school hockey across the state in a new weekly column, Hockey Across Minnesota.

But here’s the catch, I’m not from the great State of Hockey and instead call its southern neighbor home.

So, I want to hear from Minnesotans: What weird, wacky, inspirational and intriguing high school hockey stories do you want to read over your morning coffee? What makes Minnesota ice the best in the nation? How is the sport changing for the better or for the worse? Where are the most underrated hockey hotbeds? Who is rewriting high school hockey history? How are players training, eating and hydrating? (And what the heck are they saying?)

I want your help answering these questions. Share all your high school hockey happenings and histories by sending an email to olivia.hicks@startribune.com.

See you at the rink this winter.