Hmm... Wonder if the "too little, too late" flowering has to do with variety, or with how much energy is stored away in the crowns? I have only harvested hop cones for beer once, but that was in coastal Norway, just south of the arctic circle, and I guess the climate there would be similar to yours in summer, but with longer colder winters. Maybe this year your plants will start flowering earlier, since they stocked up on energy last year?
As for whether to pick off the later shoots to encourage the earlier, I don't really know anything, but my gut feeling is that hops are so powerful and tenacious that it wouldn't really matter. They don't need to prioritize where to put the energy, they just put all of it everywhere! If you like the shoots as vegetables, I don't really think that harvesting a few would set the plant back much. On the other hand, if you leave all the shoots this year, you'll get a maximum amount of leaf surface area, and so a maximum amount of photosynthetic potential. Assuming the plants don't grow dense enough that the shoots shade each other too much, of course...
Most of the hops that can be found wild or feral in my part of the world are female clones once used for beer brewing. Male plants are quite rare. I have actually planted a couple of males in our garden though, along with some females, hoping for them to set seed. From what I've read, the seeds contain plenty of fat. I haven't found anything conclusive on whether they are edible for humans, but even if it turns out they aren't, I think the birds would appreciate them!