A Honeymoon Couple

Craig Johnson scored two goals, matching a career high, and Jaroslav Modry had a career-high three assists, but the Kings’ 4-2 victory over the Nashville Predators on Saturday was the newlywed’s game.

Lubomir Visnovsky, who flew home to Slovakia earlier in the week to get married, scored a goal, the first by a King defenseman other than Mathieu Schneider, and added an assist in front of 15,481 at Staples Center.

Then he hustled to the airport to greet his new bride, the former Nina Nemcova who was due to arrive Saturday evening.

“I’m really excited,” Visnovsky said through Modry, his translator.

He was also eager to clear up any misunderstanding about his comment Friday that Nemcova was on her way to “clean and cook for me.”

The quote made him the target of much ribbing in the locker room.

“I guess the cooking and housecleaning ... makes a world of difference,” Johnson joked after Visnovsky registered two second-period points, the second an assist on Jason Allison’s winner. “I’ll have to get my wife to do that, I guess.”

Said Visnovsky: “I didn’t mean it exactly the way it came out.”

An NHL all-rookie selection last season when he led the league’s first-year defensemen with 39 points, Visnovsky had been troubled all season by Nemcova’s inability to get a visa to reenter the United States.

On Nov. 24, he made a 15-hour flight through Paris, arriving the next day in the Slovak capital of Bratislava. He and Nemcova, 22, were married Monday, and Visnovsky, 25, then boarded a flight back to Los Angeles in time for a Tuesday practice. He said they’ve planned a church wedding for next summer.

In the meantime, Visnovsky said, he can concentrate on his work.

“I feel like she can really help me out with my hockey game,” he said. “She’s the person I want to be with and we go through problems together.”

Scoring his first goal, he said, was a step in the right direction.

“I had a rocky start,” said Visnovsky, whose listless play in October got him scratched from four of the Kings’ first 14 games. “I created some chances, but the puck didn’t go into the net. Hopefully, with this first one, it’s going to go better and I’m going to get more chances and more pucks are going to go in.”

Visnovsky’s multipoint game was part of an overall strong effort by the King defensemen, who combined for six points.

“They were great today,” Johnson said. “They were joining the play. They were closing the gaps, creating turnovers. Our defense played outstanding.”

Modry, who has eight assists in five games, might have scored his first goal if his third-period shot from the left point hadn’t caromed off Johnson’s left leg into the net, giving the Kings a 4-1 lead with 13:17 to play.

“I felt bad,” Johnson said, “that it didn’t go in for him.”

Mostly, though, the Kings felt pretty good after winning for the third time in four games. They continue to mop up on the dregs of the NHL. Four of their eight victories are over the Predators, Atlanta Thrashers, Columbus Blue Jackets and Mighty Ducks, who have lost by a combined score of 19-5.

Coach Andy Murray said the latest victory was an outgrowth of Thursday night’s 3-1 loss to the Northwest Division-leading Edmonton Oilers.

“I thought Edmonton really showed us the other day how to shoot the puck on the net and how to get people in front,” Murray said after his defensemen combined for 19 of the Kings’ 35 shots on goal. Two of the King goals--Johnson in the first and Allison in the second--were scored on rebounds, and their last was scored as a result of Johnson being in the right place at the right time, getting in the way of Modry’s shot.

“He just did the right thing,” Modry said of Johnson, who had scored two goals in a game once previously, in an 8-4 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Dec. 18, 1999. “He went to the net and created some traffic.” Modry was nonplussed that he didn’t get the goal. He was more concerned, it seemed, about setting the record straight with Visnovsky’s wife about what her new husband had actually said about her.

“The other guys gave him a hard time and they blamed it on me,” Modry told reporters.

“I was wrong translating. You’ve got to fix it up.”