The best place to dispel doubt is on the ice.
Islanders coach Lane Lambert was under fire last week.
His team has now strung together consecutive wins for the first time in nearly a month.
Islanders captain Anders Lee was not making enough of an impact.
He has now scored twice in three games.
The Islanders were at risk of their season going underwater because they could not hold leads in the third period.
Now they are back above .500 on Thanksgiving Day with something you might describe as momentum following a 3-2 home victory over the Flyers in which they defended a third-period lead.
It looked like things might be primed to go downhill when the Flyers cut a 2-0 lead in half just over a minute after Brock Nelson tipped in Adam Pelech’s shot from the point.
Cam York cleaned up his own rebound at 14:18 of the second to make it 2-1, and it all looked very familiar.
Then, 2:33 into the third period, there was Nelson again, taking a backdoor feed from Pierre Engvall and tapping it in to bring the lead back to two.
The Islanders spent the rest of the third bearing down and defending.
More importantly, they did so effectively — not merely sitting back and inviting pressure but forcing the Flyers to go 200 feet and playing with desperation.
It was not the easiest night Ilya Sorokin has ever had, but it was straightforward, which is more than can be said for a lot of his starts this season.
The goalie responded by stopping 34 shots, making big saves when he needed to — including a sprawling stop with his pad on a Cam Atkinson rebound early in the third — and never looking stretched beyond his means.
Joel Farabee’s backdoor tap-in with 4:04 to go caused a spate of nerves as the lead was whittled back down to one. But ultimately, it held.
It was the first home win for the Islanders since Oct. 26 against Ottawa.
And it followed a blueprint the Islanders should be trying to repeat.
Stylistically, they are also starting to resemble the sort of team they aspire to be.
Case in point, the rolling forecheck established within the first 10 minutes of Wednesday’s game with the fourth line leading the way in Cal Clutterbuck’s 1,000th game.
The Islanders have generally played well in first periods this year and took a lead Wednesday when Anders Lee stuffed his own rebound past Carter Hart just 1:49 into the match.
But rarely has it looked like more than a mere facsimile.
Here, it did, and it proved to be so.
The Islanders had more sustained offensive zone time in this game than they have perhaps all year.
They got below the hashes, controlled play and limited chances against an opposing Flyers team that is, so far, smashing expectations this season.
The Islanders turned this into a low-event game, the kind that not so long ago they thrived at winning, and wouldn’t you know it, they looked right at home. No longer tentative, but assertive.
It’s still a long way to go for the Islanders to get out of the hole they dug for themselves.
Toward that end, the post-holiday back-to-back in Ottawa on Friday and back at UBS Arena against the Flyers on Saturday will be crucial.
But the past two games have proven a pretty good argument for keeping the faith.