Pretty tough not having your best winger and 1LD, 2RD. Pens should still end up fine though standings wise.

JJ is not the problem. Please stop trading him like he is.
This team has so many other problems. The only reason he's on the ice so much is there is no other help.
This team made serious mistakes this trade deadline.

I will agree that JJ is not "the" problem, he still is a problem. Advanced stats clearly show he has been crippling the offence of both Letang and Crosby, while making then Defensive liable. Riikola has great defensive stats, and can still provide offence the way Johnson can't

do you realize that he's not suppose to be playing with letang and Crosby?
Has that sunk in yet?
WTF do you think you would get from any 3rd pairing guy in the league trying to play 1st pairing minutes.

I 100% understand that, I also believe that Petterson or riikola would be better options

Petterson is already playing big minutes and then what's your second pairing gonna look like? Schultz and JJ. How does that "help" the team?
And Riikola is not that good. He's a 7th guy at best.

Small sample size but
Letang & Riikola
CF % : 65.85
xGF% : 75.67

Letang & Johnson
CF % : 44.79
xGF% : 44.97

Make the lines
Riikola - Letang
Petterson - Schultz
Johnson - Ruwhedel (who aren't great together but will only play like 15 min / night)

Riikola sucks. And you would never put him out there on the PK.
I don't care how you want to work the numbers. He sucks. If you ever watched you realized he'll never be more than a 3rd pairing guy, and is best suited as a 7th defenseman.

How can you say "if you ever watched" and than suggest Johnson is better than Riikola, I would 100% agree Riikola shouldnt be playing first line minutes, but I'd prefer him doing so than Johnson.

If you watched you'd know Johnson literally causes 2 goals against per game.

"I don't care how you work the numbers" by numbers you mean results. Therefore you're suggesting with this comment that you don't care if the results are alot better with Riikola over Johnson...
Letang and Riikola have dominated play together, Letang and Johnson have been dominated. Clear and simple.

Johnson doesn't cause 2 goals against per game. As a matter of fact he's usually the last one back trying to break up 2 and 3 on 1s. And he's made some decent plays and is at least noticable in positive ways unlike Riikola.
Believe me if Riikola was the answer he'd been playing 1st pairing over JJ while Riikola was on the 3rd line earlier.
But he's not. He's not that good. He's not able to stiffen up at the blueline, defend the front of the net, or actually get the puck out the zone.
Those are just facts. It's why they put JJ on that 1st pair because he was the best of what was left when Dumo went down and they didn't want to put MP on the 1st pair.