NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The first 22 minutes of Tuesday night's game bore all the earmarks of another long game for the Nashville Predators.

Trailing by three goals to the St. Louis Blues, Nashville was well on the way to falling to 1-4-1 in December and Bridgestone Arena had all the atmosphere of a library.

Then James Neal scored a goal and the Predators suddenly turned into the team they were in November.

Finishing the game with six unanswered goals, including four in the third period, Nashville won for the first time this season when trailing after two periods, bagging a 6-3 verdict.

"Winning those games goes into the memory bank," center Mike Fisher said. "It furthers the belief we already have in here. We know we can do it, we're going to have to do it again. But this was big tonight."

To put it in further context, the Predators (13-11-4) were coming off consecutive road losses to Dallas and Arizona that left coach Peter Laviolette demanding his team play faster and be better than what they were. Their start to December was 180 degrees removed from a 9-3-2 November that saw them go 6-0-1 at home.

This one looked like another helping of fail cake, until Neal got Nashville on the board with a wrister off Ryan Johansen's faceoff win at 4:07 of the second period. Filip Forsberg scored just over two minutes later and the building suddenly roared to life, including commercial breaks where fans spent the entire timeout standing and cheering like it was a playoff game.

"There were a couple of TV timeouts where I needed earplugs," Johansen said.

It got no quieter for St. Louis (16-10-4) in the third period. Just before the Predators were about to go on the power play, Johansen wired a wrister from the left faceoff circle by Jake Allen at 3:04 for the tying marker.

That gave all three members of Nashville's new first line -- Neal, Forsberg and Johansen -- goals. In particular, Forsberg could derive a spark from playing with Neal and Johansen, as he ended an eight-game skid without a goal and tallied for just the third time in 28 matches.

"They really got going and spent a lot of time in the offensive zone," Laviolette said. "That's a big thing. If you're in the offensive zone, you can start generating. You don't have to go through two zones just to get to the offensive zone."

The Predators seemed to stay in the offensive zone during the third period. That pressure finally burst the Blues for good around the midway point. Colin Wilson fed Fisher on a 2-on-1 and Fisher made no mistake for a 4-3 lead at 9:02.

Mike Ribeiro tacked on his fourth off a juicy rebound at 10:31, ending Allen's night and upping the margin to 5-3. Fisher then tacked on an empty-netter at 18:38, dumping St. Louis to 4-9-1 on the road and 1-3-0 on its just-completed road trip.

"That's three games we've lost on the road where we've had the game taken from us," Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. "I thought we got outworked on the puck. We made some big errors in our own zone with the puck and they took advantage of it."

St. Louis did the exact opposite during a 12-minute stretch late in the first period and early in the second when it gained control. Kevin Shattenkirk broke the scoring seal at 10:12 with a wrister from the right point that deflected off Roman Josi and beat Pekka Rinne.

Ryan Reaves made it 2-0 at 16:41 by roofing a wrister over Rinne's glove, courtesy of Kyle Brodziak's feed. Defenseman Brad Hunt ripped a one-timer on the power play at 1:49 of the second period with Neal in the box and the Blues by three.

Once Neal scored, though, Nashville got on a roll the likes of which Johansen hasn't seen since arriving in town last January following his trade from Columbus.

"That's the best I've seen us play since I've been here," he said. "We were unstoppable. Everyone was skating, everyone was doing the right thing."

Rinne (12-7-4) finished with 23 saves, while Allen (14-6-3) stopped 28 of 33 shots.

NOTES: St. Louis LW David Perron skated in his 600th NHL game Tuesday night and drew a start on a line with Alexander Steen and Paul Stastny. ... Nashville D Ryan Ellis and C Colton Sissons returned Tuesday night after missing eight and seven games, respectively, with upper-body injuries. ... The Blues scratched D Carl Gunnarsson, RW Ty Rattie and RW Dmitrij Jaskin. ... Predators' scratches were D Petter Granberg and C Reid Boucher.