If Boston head coach Claude Julien’s ability to hammer a lesson home worked as well on everyone as it has on Phil Kessel, the U.S. penal system could hire the Bruins’ bench boss and eliminate the recidivism rate.

If the Bruins’ Game 1 victory over Montreal in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals Thursday was any indication, the winger still has Julien’s message of a year ago fresh in his mind. Sure Kessel returned from his three-game lineup hiatus last spring to score three goals in the final three games of Boston’s seven-game loss to the Canadiens. And he followed up with a career- and team-best 36 goals during the ’08-09 regular season. But once the postseason opened, Kessel could’ve easily reverted back to his meek ways of old and tried again to get by on just his natural speed and laser-like wrist shot. Instead, he did the opposite of everything that earned him a press box seat in last year’s Game 1.

“I really liked Phil’s game, to be honest with you, (Thursday). I thought he was involved, he was going to get the puck, there was no hesitation, he skated well and he was in the right place at the right time,” Julien said today after practice. “That’s what I think last year, when we sat him out, that’s the part of the game that I don’t think he had caught on to as well. Again, he came back in those same playoffs and was a different player to me. He’s been a different player to me this year. And all that said, to me it’s not about Phil being not a good player. It’s about Phil maturing as a young player and getting better and better. That’s just the evolution of a player that you expect great things from, because he’s capable of that.

“That’s the thing that Phil understood at one point, is that if coaches are on you a little more than maybe some other players, maybe it’s because we think that you’re capable of giving us more than some of those players. And that comes with the territory. You want to be an elite player, you have to give us a little more. And he’s really understood that extremely well.”

So now the Bruins have upgraded from Kessel 8.0 to 9.0. This version scores a goal on a tap-in from the edge of the crease after Chuck Kobasew pokes a puck loose. This one backchecks and never gives up on a play. He makes himself available for a Milan Lucic pass that leads to a game-sealing empty-net goal and actually gets to be on the ice with the Bruins protecting a one-goal lead in the final minutes. It makes you start to wonder what Kessel 10.0 might look like.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still areas of Kessel’s game that need work and are sometimes enough to make you pluck some threads off your head. Even in his solid Game 1 performance, there was at least one instance of him trying to take on two defenders rather than chipping it deep or taking the puck wide. During the season there were plenty of times he skated away from contact and even got his coach to classify one play at the blue line as “just soft.” But until someone clones the perfect player there’s always going to be pluses and minuses from every individual.

When LeBron James wants to pull up from 25 feet to fire a 3-pointer, you accept it even if he misses because of all the 40-point nights and triple-doubles he’s going to give you. You live with it when Tom Brady or Peyton Manning goes for broke on a fourth-and-short rather than making the safe play because the potential is always there for something great. That just might be how you have to assess Kessel’s play — high risk, high reward. And at just 21 years old, Kessel is still a work-in-progress. He’s shown the willingness to work hard to improve and as time goes on there’ll probably be more reward and less risk — or as much risk but maybe even great individual instances of reward.

Now it’s only been one game of what might be a lengthy series and an elongated postseason run by Boston. But it’s a great sign that Kessel was able to summon that playoff level of his game right off the bat. No skater on the Bruins roster has been traded more times by the masses than Kessel, and none has his faults magnified larger than his assets on a regular basis.

It’d be a crime to not take a step back and appreciate what Kessel can do and think about what he could be as he continues to learn Julien’s lessons.