While Pulju's chances are not zero, they're somewhat slimmer than I think some people here figure.
As long as the Oilers are in the race, it's fairly safe to assume they'll keep him around as a black ace. He's not that far down in their depth chart.
In fact, he might be far further down on the depth chart of Team Finland hopefuls. I can fairly certainly say that with his current pedigree, he's not a player who's a shoo-in. He would either need to show his mettle on the camp, or many of our more desirable options for wings need to decline.
The reality is this: Rantanen, Laine, Aho, Jokinen and Armia are the ones from overseas we can assume say "yes", barring injuries. Then we have personnel in Europe who will overtake Pulju, at the very least Mi.Aaltonen (who could also go into the centre column), Haapala and Savinainen. And there are always some standouts on camp who will impress the coach. So that puts Pulju roughly at #10-11th seed of prospective top-9 wingers (with there only being room for six or seven, naturally). So at least four names from ahead of him need to be no-shows.
If most of our NHL likelies actually do show up, the rest of the ranks will be filled from whoever's on the camp (or the Liiga finals). In that case, there will be zero need for our management to look in Pulju's way. Unless he, by some miracle, is on the camp roster already.
TL;DR: It's gonna take some favorable alignment of celestial bodies for Pulju to be on this team. Either his club team releases him ahead of time, or there's been plenty of declinations among the more desirable options. His availability before the games begin simply won't be enough. Well, he does have *one* saving grace, namely, previous familiarity with Marjamäki. That could smoothen his rocky road a bit, but I doubt that still will be enough if the ideal or close-to-ideal scenario becomes a reality.
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