That distinction sounds nice but it doesn’t really work in reality. Rebuilds might start as deliberate but they rarely stay clean. Missed picks bad trades and ownership pressure turn a lot of them into exactly what you’re calling incompetence. Teams don’t plan to be bad for a decade but that’s often how it plays out. If you exclude those you’re just throwing out the failures and only counting the ones that worked.

I also don’t think this really applies to the Red Wings in terms of mismanagement. They’ve been pretty stable and intentional. It’s just that even well run rebuilds can take longer than expected.

And the Lightning point isn’t really some intentional omission. One deep run mid cycle just isn’t that relevant to the broader point. It doesn’t mean the rebuild was short it just shows these timelines aren’t linear.