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If you compressed the floor seats as tightly as possible, you might squeeze 9,000 customers into the arena for a concert of that magnitude.

On a Tuesday night in the middle of March, Elvis is not in the building. It’s the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Roadrunners and the San Jose Barracuda in an American Hockey League game. There are 3,416 people in the bleachers, and hundreds have chosen to wear hockey jerseys with names across the back:

Khabibulin.

Tkachuk.

Ovechkin.

It is a hockey crowd, for sure. If you are looking for ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s block A — some red and blue — you will find none. The only “Aâ€� is the pre-game video that spotlights nearby A Mountain.

If you want March Madness, you are 27 years too late.

On March 2, 1991, a record 7,052 hockey fans roared from start to finish as the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Icecats attempted to beat powerful North Dakota State in the national club hockey finals. The Icecats lost, but hockey in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ was indisputably celebrated.

In a two-month period of the 1992-93 season, six crowds ranging from 6,308 to 6,827 filled the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Arena. It had been like that for a decade, and not just in showdown-games against Alaska-Anchorage or ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ State, but against Michigan-Dearborn, too.

But even the Icecats in their glory days couldn’t fill the arena on a Tuesday night, which is part of life of an American Hockey League franchise like the Roadrunners. However, there are now factors at play that might transform the image of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ hockey back to the way it was in the ’80s and ’90s.

Get this: The Roadrunners are in first place in the Pacific Division. They have been so good that they have won 20 of their 29 AHL road games. How good is that? The AHL is a lot like ACC basketball. Who isn’t good?

Through games of Tuesday, the Toronto Marlies, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and the Syracuse Crunch were the only clubs in the 30-team AHL with a better winning percentage than the Roadrunners.

The race to the Calder Cup will be pure madness and, bless their second-year soul, the Roadrunners are running with the lead pack.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ has not immediately embraced the Roadrunners. They averaged 4,054 per game last year and are a fraction above that now. Why this is, I can’t be sure, but some of it has to do with newness, and the inability to build hometown momentum like most of the other 29 AHL teams.

For example, the Roadrunners were only able to secure four home dates in February, and four more in March. That’s the height of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s winter-visitors season. The Roadrunners drew just 4,778 for those February dates and barely 4,000 this month.

Now everything changes. The playoffs are a month away, and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ needs to play just .500 to be one of the four Pacific teams in the dance.

Roadrunners president Bob Hoffman long ago worked with the AHL’s schedule-makers about making the weekends of April 6-7 and 13-14 a priority. If it all works out, it could be a breakout the franchise needs.

One: a championship team.

Two: four prime dates — promotional gold — in the year’s final four home games.

“We get a little bit of a break because of the time we have to be away in February when the arena is booked with the Gem Show,� said Hoffman. “Other teams play at home almost every other weekend through the season. But we have a 20-day hiatus and, if there’s a positive to that, it’s that we were able to prioritize our dates in April.�

Combining a winner with back-loaded scheduling, the Roadrunners are apt to draw 20,000 or more on those four April dates. It is a potential image-changing opportunity.

“You never know who will be coming to their first Roadrunners game,� said Hoffman, who, like many front-office executives in minor-league sports, believes in the snowball effect.

“I’m not sure how much being in first-place moves the needle during the regular-season. But once you get close to postseason, people hear about a winner in town and want to check it out.�

That’s when the snowball effect clicks in.

Hockey night at the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Arena is different. It’s unfamiliar to most of those who don’t know the difference between the Toronto Marlies and the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’s different because of something as simple as remembering to take a jacket with you.

That ice does stay solid just because the AC is set at high.

And it’s different because so many of the Roadrunners grew up in places like Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Baie-Comeau, Quebec City, where you don’t often run across a Dallas Cowboy or a Los Angeles Dodger.

On Tuesday night, Conor Garland of Scituate, Mass., scored a goal for the Roadrunners even before the queue at the beer garden subsided. Forty seconds later, some guy from the San Jose Barracuda punched Garland in the face.

Talk about moving the needle. The crowd of 3,416 made so much noise you would have thought it was 34,160.

When the Roadrunners return in April, they’ll stage Superhero Night. They hope to sell all 6,800 tickets. Bring your own snowball.