Very possible. Maybe the transwarp conduit Janeway wiped was their plan to finally get serious. Instead of sending one cube from their outskirts, they would sent 20 or so. Bye bye, Federation...
That was the inherent problem with how the Borg were shown in Voyager. In both BoBW and FC, we get the impression that there's only one cube period. It's very powerful, and when it appears, lots of people die. But it's still only one cube. But then VOY showed that the Borg have these all-powerful fleets of cubes, and giant Transwarp hubs with endpoints all over the galaxy (and one conveniently within 1 light year of Earth!) It's completely unbelievable that the Borg haven't already assimilated the entire galaxy already with what we saw. So I don't think it is a matter of the Borg 'toying' with the Federation, because they would logically have no reason to do that. It's more a matter of the people producing VOY making them too all-powerful and yet also standoffish for some illogical reason. It truly makes no sense.
Unless you believe the Borg aren't going full-bore on assimilation because they believe it will benefit them more in their quest for perfection to let other civilizations become more advanced before assimilating them. In that sense, the Federation's playing right into the Borg's hands, because every time the Borg attack the Federation gets a bit tougher and more technologically advanced, while still posing no real threat to them.
Nope, I don’t believe that. I have seen nothing to indicate that they have any objective sense other than to assimilate on contact.
Or perhaps the flight - and past history - always proceeded exactly the way we saw it, and it was a predestination paradox. Thus, ST:FC was always supposed to happen, and so there never was a version of the Phoenix's flight that didn't include Riker and Geordi. The fact that the Enterprise and crew returned to the same future they left, would tend to support this theory.
"isn't it weird that Gabriel Bell looks like Captain Sisko? And Phoenix Flight Specialist Randy Randerson looks like Commander Riker? And Phoenix Navigator Chet Manly looks like Commander La Forge? And Zephram Cochrane looks like George Sibley from Six Feet Under?"