One thing that sticks in my head...
It seems the USA Team came back, and those unhappy with their situations (certainly those who have had long rumored to be as well) have all requested their intention for trade: specifically Larkin, Sloth, and Trochek, right? Additionally, there has been historic rumblings around Hellebyuk and those have resurfaced again and that its a matter of time, etc.
Okay, so these group chat that has been alluded to has led us here and they all seem to have a strange shortlist of contending teams: VGS (Eichel/Hanifin), MIN (Hughes, Faber and Boldy), and FLA (Tkachuk) - all heavy favorites for the Cup, all in the US (no Canada), etc. DAL and CAR are also likely and we've heard their names bounded about... but we quickly remove any Canadian teams (WPG, OTT, TOR) or teams that are far away from contention (NYR, CLB, DET, etc.).
Now, a lot of this also seems to be the closeness of certain players (Larkin to Hughes, Tkachuk to Tkachuk, etc. Larkin to Eichel, etc.), and this vocal leadership in the group chat that are obviously trying to pull players to them. I have no doubt that Guerin/Hughes/Boldy were pushing, or the Tkachucks were working on trying to pull together. I kind of ignore the older players as trying to manipulate a super team (Millers, Nelsons, Guentzels, Trocheck or Slavin) but the guy I would expect more involved in this would be Jack Hughes. Im really curious why Jack, who is in that same age group, cliche of guys, connections with all of them, etc. isn't trying to pull any players to NJ. I would find that to be really disconcerting because that is a team that's right there with a core of good players, things to offer, etc. and adding 1-2 guys from Team USA in big pick up moves along with him, just seems like a logical thing.
I have a hard time to believe that Quinn would be on with Larkin and not Jack or vice versa.