America’s best NHL players are amalgamating in… New Jersey?

The NHL has never been great at conspiracy theories, but they’ve got a good one going now – the New Jersey Strategy.

This scheme involves some sort of Star-Chamber-in-jocks after the U.S. won gold in Milan. In that meeting, it was decided a certain number of American players would leave their current pro clubs and band together to take over the league. In particular, they would abandon Canada.

Shortly thereafter, Brady Tkachuk, Connor Hellebuyck and Dylan Larkin – good players on mediocre teams – demanded trades. Quinn Hughes declined to sign an extension in Minnesota. Hughes’s brothers, Jack and Luke, play in New Jersey – another mediocre team.

If you believe in the New Jersey Strategy, that’s where most of these guys intend on ending up. Hellebuyck arrived about a week ago. Hughes can move there in the summer. Larkin will be the proof of it.

Having started the season with the Red Wings, the former Detroit captain is refusing to work until he is moved. The team has suspended him without pay in the interim.

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Larkin has given Detroit a list of teams he is willing to go to. New Jersey is the weird one on it – neither a proper contender, nor a sexy locale. (To be clear, normal people don’t think of Tampa as “sexy,” but for hockey players it’s Paris in spring all year long.)

If any of this is true, then things are worse than we thought. Not because hockey players are conspiring to manipulate the market. That part is a major improvement.

NBA players do this sort of thing all the time. It’s one of the reasons basketball is so much more fun than the NHL. Less moving as a pack; more chaotic free thinking. That trend should be encouraged.

The depressing thing is this particular fix’s level of aspiration: zero.

Fiddling things so that they all end up in New York, I would get. You’ve got the largest media concentration on the planet, plus the most ridiculous owner in sports. That’s a combo with possibilities.

L.A. would also work. Wayne Gretzky laid the foundation, and Heated Rivalry provided a contemporary scaffolding you could build on. How do the Quinn brothers feel about microdramas? A couple of cool hockey-influencing cats having cheeky adventures in the Hollywood Hills. Maybe they could roller blade to Spago.

But New Jersey? This is how they’re going to MAGA-fy the NHL? Trumpism really is in retreat.

As a general rule, sports conspiracy theories are false because most would require a) research and b) organization. Pros aren’t good at such things. They’re more cut out to be delegators. It’s hard to delegate your current GM to do a deal that submarines his interests in order to prioritize your own.

This is what sets the New Jersey Strategy apart. It’s so sad, so lacking in imagination, that it might actually be true.

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If hockey players had had to organize the Kennedy assassination, they would’ve been stumped trying to snap the rifle together. Isn’t there an equipment guy who should be doing the gun stuff for us?

But I can buy a bunch of them, eight Rolling Rocks deep, putting their heads together and coming up with New Jersey.

It has no state income tax! (It does.)

They’ll love us there! (They won’t care.)

We’ll be out in Manhattan every night! (If you have a helicopter).

New Jersey has already been a powerhouse. That’s a part of NHL history most people have purposely forgotten. All I can remember about it now is Scott Stevens hitting guys with his hip and their heads popping off, and entire games played within 10 feet of centre ice. In the nineties, the Devils built the most anonymous dynasty in league history. There is no demand for a sequel.

Here’s the sad fact for America firsters – if you want to build a hockey monolith that will ensure your name rings out in eternity, you’re going to have to do it as a guest worker in Canada.

Carolina could make it five Cups in a row, and you still won’t be able to find one in 10 randos on the street in Miami who can tell you the team nickname.

Even in the U.S.’ strongest hockey markets, hockey will never make the impression it once did. The Bruins or Flyers will never again be the Bruins and Flyers from 50 years ago. There’s too much more sports these days, and the country has become too inward looking. Team USA may suddenly be a big deal in America, but that does not mean hockey is.

Had these guys decided they were all going to Montreal, that would make actual sense. Americans may not rate the sport, but they appreciate winners. If you could build the Los Angeles Dodgers in Quebec, manned primarily by Americans, that’s news back home. ‘We stole their game!’ ‘We’re bigger than Rocket Richard (please click link to Rocket Richard’s Wiki)!’

Same effect in Toronto or Edmonton. Even Texans have heard of those places.

But this idea of assembling the hockey Avengers somewhere off the I-280 turnpike? I don’t care how good you are, that’s not going to work.

Hellebuyck has already arrived and been excellent. In terms of league-wide discussion points, it’s still five rungs below whoever’s blowing it in goal Tuesday night for the Leafs.

If the point here is to have a nice, quiet life in hockey, then by all means, Newark. It’s got a lot of good points, most of which are proximity to other, better cities. It’s in the delivery catchment for an Italian sandwich joint in Lyndhurst that I think about at least once a week.

But if you’re trying to rewrite all the rules, take control of the means of production, and turn hockey into America’s game, I’m afraid this conspiracy has already been foiled. You foiled it.