Yes, Schultz has more offensive zone starts than JJ thats why he gives up less shots & chances than him while still being a negative impact player. I’m not denying Schultz is a trash defender. The issue is, you keep arguing that JJ has been a solid third pairing defender because he has had a positive +/- rating in the games he’s played. +/- is not an indicative stat & the fact that he has been a positive while playing on the third pairing is an indication that he’s been very lucky because the underlying numbers shows that he’s still unable to get out of his own end while conceding extremely large amounts of shot attempts & scoring chances. His positive rating is very unsustainable since he’s getting bailed out by goaltending & the opposition’s poor finishing. He was a negative for 3 of the last 5 games when goaltending was poor despite seeing little ice time. I don’t know how you can ignore the fact that 80% of the time when he’s on the ice, the team gives up a scoring chance. Compare that to Schultz who you say is the worst - Johnson has 9% more defensive zone starts while conceding scoring chances at a higher rate of 28%. How is he good defensively? He is just as bad as Schultz if not worse. I don’t see why it would hurt to play Riikola. Sure, shelter him if you insist. At least he can move the puck up the ice to the forwards smoothly allowing them to start an offensive zone cycle. JJ is not only horrible defensively, he doesn’t do contribute anything on the offensive side of the game either. When he’s on the ice, the team generates no high danger scoring shots. He always kills the play by failing to handle the puck & making bad passes in which it doesn’t go to a goal scoring area. So what is he good at? He’s utterly useless. You only like him because you believe that being physical & blocking shots = good defending.

First of all, JJ should never "go to a goal scoring area." He should stay back because he's not fast enough to skate back.

Second a lot of what you are syaing here is patently false. His PDO is 99.3 and he had a 89.3 save% behind him this year. So lets stop the idea that he had goal tending saving him. He did not.
Third his 5v5 Corsi and Fenwick is 47.3%, which isn't horrible for a 3rd pairing guy who gets 55% of his starts in the D zone. So lets not act like he's killing play.
If your 80% stat was true, those number would be no where close to 50%. Because almost 50% of the time the penguins have the puck.
A basic look at stats shows this.
JJ was not saved by anything.
On top of it, in 67 games he has been credited with 5 turn overs. 5... He actually has more take aways 6. This is all 5v5 play.
Just to put that in perspective. In 61 games Letang has 50.
So lets not talk about how all these things are JJ fault.
Is he the greatest puck handler in the world. No, but one thing he doesn't do is turn the damn puck over right in front of his own net.

So yeah, JJ is pretty on par with a 3rd pairing guy.
He's not great, has flaws to his game. But he's not killing the team.
There are plenty of other areas of the team where you can look specifically and say, this is a major problem. Schultz being incompetent in his own end. Letang turing the puck over constantly. The teams inability to win a face off.
But what is not sinking the team is JJ play. FFS even the damn media couldn't say anything bad about his play on the 3rd pair this year. You know there is nothing to talk about when JJ not being a story is a story.

You're looking at his stats overall this season. Based on his time only on the third pairing this season, Johnson has a 40.5% Corsi for & 59.5% against. High danger scoring chance differential of 20 for, 80 against. That is not "decent," it's horrible. Even the 47% that you mentioned for the whole season isn't good considering that the Pens want to be a puck-possession team & getting stuck in the defensive zone is a straight deterrence to that. Getting a defensive zone start 53% should not be an excuse for posting such poor numbers. There are players getting over 60% defensive zone starts yet they have a similar number to Jack if not better. Like Ian Cole & Zdeno Chara. Heck, the ZAR, Bluger & Tanev each get around 60-70% defensive zone starts, yet they all around 50% Corsi. It's about being able to move the puck out of the zone & JJ clearly can't do that. It's funny how you always shift the blame for JJ's poor results. It's never his fault! Then explain to me why every player JJ's shared the ice with, no matter which role he plays (Malkin, Crosby, Letang, Marino etc) have seen their time spent in the defensive zone, shots against and scoring chances against significantly increase when they play with him, yet without him, it goes down? Perhaps it is because he's an incompetent defender who drags each of his linemates down and always causes the team to get outplayed when he's on the ice.

dude you are comparing JJ to Zdeno Chara......
I mean really.
And any pens fan will tell you Cole was seriously under rated.

Nathan Beaulieu, Robert Hagg, Will Butcher, Connor Carrick, Greg Pateryn, Brendan Guhle, Jordan Oesterle, Brandon Montour, Ericsson, Jonathan, Sekera, Andrej, Hickey, Thomas, Johnny Boychuk
Staal, Marc, Andreas Englund, Borowiecki, Mark

compare apples to apples man.
Here are some other teams 3rd pair guys. Let me tell you, there are guys there worse than JJ.
There are guys there if they were on the penguins. They'd be sitting and you be like oh HELL NO.
There are also a lot of guys there who are just about the same damn level as JJ.
You really expect to much.

The common thing with all the guys you mentioned is that they are either playing on really bad teams, really bad possession teams or are making the league minimum. Johnson is getting paid to play like a middle 4 defenseman, you at least expect him to be replacement-level good. However, he is below replacement-level bad & should be in the AHL making the league minimum. To be getting as bad results as he's gotten while playing on a team that strives to be one of the best at generating possession is a big reason why the Pens are not as good as they should be. I'll put it this way. If the Pens play JJ in the playoffs, expect them to get under siege when he's on the ice. If you enjoy winning games despite being outplayed, then I can't help you.

his contract has nothing to do with what is happening on ice. And no one is arguing he's not over paid.
You are rambling here.
Look at that list. bad team my ass.
You put those guys on the penguins and it's garbage in garbage out.
What you refuse to realize is every team has a JJ level player on it. Every single one. It's how we had Hunwick the year before.
He's a 3rd pairing guy. That list up there....that's a 3rd pairing guy list.
Now the truth is, JJ is probably better than a few of those guys, I'd say most of them.
You can argue he is not....but neither one of us is fooling anyone. The whole list of them, including JJ is not that good. But that's why they are 3rd pairing.
This whole bent you have that all the penguins problems fall directly on JJ is mind numbing.
The penguins aren't as good as they should be because they got 3 defense men, Schultz, who sucks, Letang who is a freaking turn over machine, and JJ who really aren't great defense men.
Out of those 3. Schultz is the biggest eye soar on the whole team, with a huge contract and able to contribute absolutely nothing.
Letang single handedly costs the team games every year with turn overs. And then there is JJ, a guy relegated to 3rd pairing role and is ......... yeah, no better than what most other teams are rolling out on their 3rd line.

Yes, the vast majority of the players you listed are from teams like Anaheim, Buffalo, Ottawa, New Jersey, Minnesota, Detroit or teams that often get outplayed like Winnipeg. Every team has these players? More like the worst ones. Look at the elite cup contenders. Does Washington have anyone as bad as JJ? Nope. Does Boston? Nope. Colorado? Nope. Carolina? Nope. Tampa? Other than Bogosian who was only brought in to fill for injuries, so nope. Truth is, most contending teams do not have players that are below replacement level bad like JJ.

Here you are blaming the other players again. Then let me ask again, how come when Letang & Schultz played with Johnson, their defensive zone time, shots against and scoring chances against increased significantly to the point they were a net negative, whereas when they got split away from him, their numbers improved? Even with Schultz's horrible play, he got better results when he played with Maatta and Pettersson. Literally every player that's shared ice time with Jack Johnson have seen their numbers drop. Why is that? Is it because everyone's flaws are causing them to play badly with JJ, or because JJ's bad causing everyone else to play bad? You choose.

It's common sense to see that there is only one common denominator here.

Lets see, you put a turn over machine next to a guy who is 3rd pairing level and you wonder why his numbers suffer?
You put a guy who can't play in his own end and you put him next to a 3rd pairing level guy and you wonder why his numbers suffer?
This isn't hard to figure out..
Why when Marino played with JJ, JJ numbers looked really pretty solid and the pairing did well?
Was Marino the JJ whisperer.
Your logic is a two way street man. It's not just JJ that makes Schultz look bad. I hate to break that too you. A lot of that starts with Schultz himself. When you don't pair him with someone strong enough to help him out, he sinks too. Because he is already bad in his own end. And the same could be said about Letang too. JJ doesn't cause Letang to turn the puck over constantly in front of the net. That's on Letang. Personally I think you under appreciate all of what Dumo does covering for his poor play. The guy single handedly cost the team playoff games last year. Period. Not JJ, Letang.

Look at the 4 teams you listed there. 1st lets throw out CAR because they are stacked on the back end and have been for some time.
TB....Luke Schenn added to Bogosian .
You should really look at that roster though. They got two guys there on rookie deals. Then they got a reclamation project in KS dirt cheap. Who I would say is no better than JJ but you'll see that next year. Much like was saw that in NY.
Go look at that team next year when these guys actually have to get paid and then tell me how their defense looks. The penguins don't have the luxury of having 1/2 their defense making nothing. But boy is that gonna change for them next year. You won't be seeing that next year will you. The team is in cap hell. Much like the penguins are every year trying to make it fit.

COL is no different. 3/4 of their top 4 are making under 1 million don't worry that will change. What a difference actually keeping your draft picks makes huh? When you don't have to pay your top 4, it makes it really easy to have nice 3rd pairing guys don't it?

BOS. Connor Clifton has played 30 some games there this year. Given he's a call up.
BOS might be the one team in the whole league you can use an example of. Imagine that they are a 1st place team. But they have other issues that the penguins don't have.
I could very well point out TOR as a rebuff at this because 1/2 their defense is awful. Which why they would have probably missed the playoffs had they not been saved by the end of the season. Or DET. who I never mention. For every 1 good team there are like 2 others who are horrible. Tell me, does the whole TOR team suck? At some point you have to pick your poison. TOR chose forwards. Much like the penguins do.

The reality is the vast majority of the league has a bad defense man on them. The penguins have 2 for sure in JJ and Schultz.
Go ask the GM why that is. Don't look at me on it. I'm not the one who resigned Schultz to that awful contract after hiding him in the playoffs all year the year prior.
But for the love of god stop acting like the whole problem of the team is JJ. It's not.
If you watched the games you'd know this. You'd know JJ also makes plays. When he's constantly left in a 2 on 1.
Tell me who's fault are all of those? Let me guess JJ left JJ in a 2 on 1. Hell he was the only one left in position. Must be his fault. How many 2 on 1s have you seen the past 2 years. I can't even count them all. There are several a game. It probably has a lot to do with the RD jumping in on the play and the LD being forced to then play Center field and the Left side of the boards where they left being the side the team constantly goes down because the forwards don't rotate. But hey, watch games much?

You just choose to blame JJ for everything on this team because it's easy.
I assure you it's easier for teams to hide one bad defense man than 2.
Which is the exact situation the penguins are in. And when the penguins have injury it ends up being 3 because they trade away every guy who's decent for a rental or some crap.
If their blue line stays healthy all year, no one is even talking about this. Period.
Which is why no one was. But injuries magnify things because it makes it harder to hide them.

It's why Schultz leaving next year is a blessing. They can replace him with someone capable in the defensive end on the 3rd pairing.
But lets not act like JJ makes any of these guys "bad" defense men. He doesn't. Schultz sinks on his own. And Letang is a turn over machine on his own. That poor play has nothing to do with JJ.
And the reality is, JJ has no business on the 1st pair playing with Letang anyway. Like every other 3rd pairing guy.

You’re incorrect about the JJ-Marino pairing generating good results. They had an expected goals percentage of 35. Maybe that’s better than JJ’s usual performance but it’s still garbage. Marino’s corsi with JJ was 42.57%. Marino’s Corsi away from JJ is 58.37% & his expected goals percentage on a pairing with Pettersson is 55%. Quite a drastic difference so are you still going to deny that JJ is the anchor?

You claim that Schultz sinks himself, maybe that’s true, but how come the Maatta-Schultz pairing generated the best results from the Penguins defence over the past 3 seasons? During their time together, they had an expected goals percentage of 54. When Schultz played with Cole, they had an xG% of 52. The Johnson-Schultz had an xG% Of 25. Why are his results that much worse when playing with Johnson?

You keep blaming Letang for his turnovers, yes, they can be costly, but I could care less about it because he’s still a positive impact player the majority of the time. He suppresses shots, moves the puck smoothly in transition & generates scoring chances in the offensive zone. The Pens’ issue is they get under siege when JJ is on the ice, they get outshot, outplayed & outchanced significantly. That’s it. It’s not reasonable to blame anyone else other than the guy who gets significantly worse results than his teammates .

Lets agree to disagree on this. Because the instance you are talking about " The Pens’ issue is they get under siege " happens well more than just when JJ is on the ice.
How Maatta-Schultz pairing ever worked is a mystery to me. Both are horrible defense men. Maatta is a statue an Schultz is worthless in his own end. Some things just can't be explained.
But lets not pretend Schultz is a better defenseman than JJ. Because that is an absurdity almost everyone can admit. He has no business ever being caught in the DZone. It's brutal. It's why he's the guy they hide and have hidden for years. The defense improves the day he's gone. I think most people who have actually watched him play understand that addition by subtraction.

As for the Corsi number you are using on Marino and JJ you have to break them down. That's why I put them at 5v5.
Because JJ and Marino are both penalty killers.
And there are huge disparities in the numbers because of that.
Take the game on https://www.hockey-reference.com/boxscores/201911210NYI.html
The penguins committed 8 penalties. Needless to say, the corsi is lower. Well yeah, they are on the PK for 12+ minutes that game after all was said and done.
So you have to break them down into 5v5 play. Otherwise it's a meaningless stat.
I'm not the only one who noticed his play was not horribly bad as a 3rd pairing. That isn't to say it wasn't bad. Just not as bad as some people claim.
https://triblive.com/sports/penguins-defenseman-jack-johnson-still-has-critics-but-hes-more-comfortable-in-year-2/
https://1059thex.iheart.com/featured/mark-madden/content/2019-02-28-admit-it-jack-johnson-is-playing-well/
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/penguins/2019/12/15/Penguins-Jack-Johnson/stories/201912150193
https://www.pensburgh.com/2019/12/16/21023928/lets-have-an-honest-objective-talk-about-jack-johnson

I don't know how you can sit here and ignore the fact. That when he was sitting on the 3rd pairing the play was no where near as bad as you would like to blame him for being.
Even people who bashed him repeatedly had to confess. As a 3rd pairing guy, it was working out. As much as it killed them to do so. He was a non story till that changed.
Then the injuries happened. He got shifted to 1LD, where he should have never been. And things went to trash.

No JJ is no all star. But when you look at the list of other 3rd pairing guys I have posted there. Lets not pretend he's horribly worse than any of those guys. He's not.
He's right on par with them. If not this year a little better. And those are some standard 3rd pairing guys. Yes there are a few teams deep on defense who don't have a guy like that. But in general most teams do. So it's no always, the grass is greener.
These issues you talk about with being suck in your own end come because they have a collection of guys who aren't very good. Not 1 guy.
You put Schultz on one pair, JJ on another, and then Riikola on the 3rd and holly crap your defense looks shaky. That's what injury does to a team.
It's not simply oh JJ is always the cause of them playing bad. It's a collective issue. You can only hid so many bad defensemen for so long.
Lets talk about how from 11-30 to 3-3 most of JJ stats are in a situation he should have never been placed in to begin with. He was out of his league playing above 3rd pairing.
It's this time frame he got killed on the ice. Not 10-3 to 11-30. Where everyone noticed a difference.

Believe me in an ideal world both JJ and Schultz are gone.
But JJ is far from the only issue on this team and everything isn't his fault.
As far as 3rd pairing guys go, he's right there with a large group of them.

Even at even strength Marino gets far better results playing without JJ than with. I think Schultz is a horrible defender, but even he has been able to put up average to slightly above average results with certain defense partners. Johnson has had a history of being outplayed, outshot & outchanced his whole career. Even when he played with the reliable defensive stalwart Savard in Columbus while getting top PP time, he had a Corsi of only 47% & expected goals % of 39. You can’t sign these types of defensemen if you want to be a contending team. Unless this team gets lucky during the playoffs, they aren’t winning the cup with JJ in the lineup. I hope I’m wrong & that he plays well, but history has shown he isn’t capable. Calvin De Haan was a much better option at free agency.

There were all kinds of better options in FA, and no fan was happy with it. But Calvin De Haan isn't friends with Crosby so that's that.

Schultz is awful, Schultz is always hidden. They would never let him go out there and PK. Ever. In 5 years in pittsburgh he has like 26 minutes PK time.

Like I said, this teams problems are much further than 1 defense man. It's a cumulative effect. You can't hide 3 bad defense men. 1 maybe. 3 no.
This is why they are stuck in their own end. It's why that should be less now that they have a top 4 again.
And frankly they should hide Schultz and JJ together. playing 13 minutes a night, not the 20+ JJ played with Dumo hurt.
And that's the best this team can hope for.

Yes I agree that they should shelter both Schultz & JJ in the playoffs.