MONTREAL — Listen up, people. Your job Monday night is so simple, even a Toronto Maple Leafs fan could do it.

When the horn sounds and this Game 6 is over, no matter if the Canadiens win or lose, you’re to roll out the standing O, Montreal-style. Think Rocket Richard in 1996. Think Saku Koivu, his head shaved, making a proud return after battling cancer.

Don’t wait for some gravel-dumb voice from the sound system to urge you to “make some noy-oyse.” This is strictly do-it-yourself decibels.

Make the earth shake. Make the press box sway. Make it sound as though that big, ugly barn is about to levitate, go airborne and fly all the way to Pittsburgh.

Make the Bell Centre, for once, about something other than extracting the maximum number of dollars from the maximum number of fans in the minimum amount of time. Make it yours, even if it’s for just one night.

Why? Because what you have seen over the past month, ladies and gentlemen, has been extraordinary. Not because this is the best edition of the Canadiens we have ever seen — it’s not even close. Not because they have gone farther than anyone anticipated.

No, these guys deserve it because they have overcome so much. For openers, this is a team that was supposed to make a quicker exit than your 14th hotdog.

They’ve lost their best defenceman and, at this point, three of the top five.

They’ve dealt with officiating that belongs in a Friday night beer league. You know, the kind of league where the players drink with the refs . . . before the game.

They’ve faced scheduling that would dismay the ’77 Habs. Playing a Game 7 in Washington on a Wednesday night, flying to Pittsburgh to start the second round less than 48 hours later, then playing an afternoon game on the Sunday.

They’ve had a player, Sergei Kostitsyn, who has ticked off his kindly old coach so badly that he’s been kicked off the team — during the playoffs.

They’ve yanked their goalie twice and replaced him as the starter once.

They have a 20-year-old defenceman whose previous NHL resume was a decaf latte, now playing 22 minutes a game — and starring.

They were supposed to be wielding six-irons by now, but the Canadiens are still hurling their bruised and battered bodies in front of pucks, still battling for every square centimetre of the ice, still making this sometimes jaded town sit up and take notice.

Not only are they still standing, the Canadiens are playing .500 hockey against the two most dangerous teams in the Eastern Conference: A dozen games into the second season, they have won six and lost six.

Years from now, bleary-eyed coaches in video rooms will still be deconstructing the tactics Jacques Martin and his grew have used against Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby.

They’re frustrated Ovechkin to distraction, contained Malkin and brought out the vintage whine in Sid the Kid. After Ovechkin was “held” to five goals and five assists in the first round, everyone said that Crosby would teach them a lesson. The result? Crosby has no goals, three assists, and 1,037 complaints to the referee.