Obviously Todd can't speak Finnish. How do you expect him to communicate that to him?
Come on, that's just ignorant. If you paid any attention to interviews with reporters this fall it's clear Jesse understands English well enough to answer even complicated questions.
The issue is how Pulju is utilized and how he gets no rope with McLellan despite having had a really good pre-season. As others have stated McLellan is not doing Pulju any favours. A decent coach would put Pulju in positions to use his strengths while he works on his weaknesses, not staple him to the bench because his game has some weaknesses. Also, the issues Jesse does have aren't costing the team goals like some other players who are given plenty of opportunities.
Fact is, and it's obvious at this point, Pulju is and has been in McLellan's dog house and I don't see how he finds his way out when McLellan gives him minimal and sporadic ice time. It's tough to get your confidence back when the coach won't put you out for long stretches of a period despite having good opportunities (ie: yesterday's 4 vs 4 where Caggiula and Strome got a full shift to start the 4 vs 4 after a shortened Oilers PP) to put your skills to good use. There doesn't seem to be a reason or a rhyme to why he get benched either, he can be playing poorly or playing well and he still gets benched for long stretches regardless. Meanwhile other players make mistakes and get thrown back out with regularity, there's definitely a double standard.
He plays well defensively too so it's not like when he's out there the team bleeds chances against because of him. Yesterday he struggled with the puck at times for sure, but you could tell that he didn't have the confidence he was playing with two weeks ago where he was strong on the puck, skating fast and making plays. Like what the hell are the conversations going on behind the scenes to kill somebody's confidence like that? Better question yet, why doesn't the coach recognize his approach with this player isn't working and try something else? Pulju wasn't a player that struggled like this before coming to the Oilers, it's not just on him, put in some f***ing effort to try and salvage this guy's game.