Monday’s battle of Atlantic Division powers kicked off with the Bruins punched in the mouth by the Lightning.

The punches were brutal and had the early makings of a potential blowout at Amalie Arena, as the Lightning opened the game with a 9-0 edge in shots, and struck first behind a Nick Paul game-opening tally.

Perhaps that should have been expected given the way the Bruins have put the rest of the league on notice with their 16-2-0 start to the 2022-23 season and with the Lightning looking to remain atop the Eastern Conference totem pole after three straight runs to the Stanley Cup Final.

But as we’ve learned again and again — as much as you can through just 19 games, anyway — there’s not a situation that takes these Bruins out of their element. And the pushback from the Bruins was a fierce one, and enough to ultimately power to the team to their seventh straight victory behind a 5-3 victory over the Lightning.

Knotted up at 1-1 through 20 minutes of action after David Krejci responded to Paul’s goal with a bomb clapped through the Bolts’ Andrei Vasilevskiy, and with major help from Linus Ullmark’s 13-of-14 first-period performance, the Bruins yanked the second period from the Bolts and used it as the opening they needed.

In a middle frame that saw the Bruins double the Lightning up in shots, with 14 compared to just seven by Tampa, the Bruins kicked off a goal spree with a nifty Nick Foligno power-play tuck, and added another goal just 31 seconds later when Charlie Coyle banged a loose puck home before Vasilevskiy’s net came off its moorings.

But the moment of the night for the Bruins came at the 15:08 mark of the period, when Brad Marchand had all the time in the world to the left of Vasilevskiy to fire a goal through Tampa’s ace netminder.

Not only did the goal hold as the game-winning marker by the night’s end, but with an assist on the goal, Patrice Bergeron recorded the 1,000th point of his NHL career.

And this sequence was about as Bergeron as it gets.

With the play beginning in the B’s end, Bergeron helped lead the puck through the neutral zone, and hit Jake DeBrusk on an offensive-zone entry. Bergeron then drove towards the Tampa Bay net, and drew the attention of Victor Hedman on the way, and even Erik Cernak joined in to attempt to prevent any Bergeron net-front looks, which gave Marchand all the time and space needed.

With the assist, Bergeron became just the fourth player in Bruins franchise history to hit the 1,000-point mark with the club, joining Phil Esposito (1,012), Johnny Bucyk (1,339), and Ray Bourque (1,506).

The Bruins added a fifth goal behind a David Pastrnak power-play strike scored at the 3:51 mark of the third period, and though the Lightning would make things interesting with two third-period tallies of their own, this never got into true danger territory of a one-goal game.

In goal, Ullmark finished with a 32-of-35 performance in the Black and Gold crease, while Vasilevskiy took the loss with five goals allowed on 29 shots faced.

The Bruins did, however, suffer an in-game loss in this contest, as Trent Frederic departed with an upper-body injury sustained on a violent crash into the boards behind the Tampa Bay net. Should Frederic miss any time, Craig Smith, who has been a healthy scratch for the last four games, would be summoned back into action.

The B’s will wrap up this quick two-game tour of Florida with a Wednesday night showdown with the Panthers.