Andrew Poturalski picked an excellent time to collect his first hat trick of the season Friday night.

Poturalski scored three straight goals to help the RoughRiders snap a five-game losing streak and defeat Team USA, 5-2, before 2,620 USHL fans at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena.

Poturalski, a 20-year-old forward from Williamsville, N.Y., gave the RoughRiders a 3-1 lead with a power play goal in the first period, made it 4-1 in the second period and struck again with an unassisted goal in the third period as his club collected an important win.

"You need those type of games from your veteran players," said Cedar Rapids Coach Mark Carlson, who had Poturalski on his club last season as well. "That was a tremendous job by Potts. We need more of those type of things from other guys."

Cedar Rapids had not won a game since Feb. 28 and was an 0-and-5 in March, including consecutive losses to Team USA in Ann Arbor, Mich., last weekend.

The RoughRiders had fallen three points behind Dubuque in the battle for second place in the Eastern Conference with three weeks left in the regular season. In addition, Chicago and Green Bay were beginning to creep up from behind in the chase for the USHL playoffs.

"We know what's going on, but that doesn't affect us and what we're doing around here," said Poturalski, who leads the RoughRiders with 20 goals and 31 assists for 51 points in 52 games. "We're just sticking to our plan and we're doing what we have to do and not try to hope for somebody else to do anything. We know if we win we're going to make it."

Dubuque lost Friday night and is sitting with 64 points, just one point now ahead of Cedar Rapids.

The RoughRiders were outshot by Team USA, 26-16, but the Riders made their shots count and found the net five times. Meanwhile, Danny Tirone turned away 24 attempts at the other end with some good work in goal.

"I thought he had a nice game for us tonight," Carlson said about his goalie.

Corey Petrash gave Cedar Rapids a 1-0 lead, but Team USA tied the game on a goal by Shane Gersich. Dylan Steman gave the RoughRiders a 2-1 edge in the first period, then Poturalski took over and shot the Riders into a 5-1 advantage before Team USA scored late in the game.

"I thought it was a pretty good game for us. We played more aggressive as a group, I thought," said Carlson. "We were able to score tonight and played pretty responsibly defensively. That was really about it."

"I think we stuck to the game plan for the whole game," said Poturalski. "At the end it was a little rough. For the most part we played real well and played hard and got the result we deserved.

"We knew we had to get on track, so tonight was a big night for us and positive results," he said.

Cedar Rapids hosts Team USA again Saturday night at 7:05.

Team USA        1  0  1 - 2
Cedar Rapids     3  1  1 - 5

CR - Corey Petrash (Nathan Widman, Andrew Gaus)
USA - Shane Gersich (Auston Matthews)
CR - Dylan Steman (Kevin Shand, Frederik Tiffels)
CR - Andrew Poturalski (power play) (Andrew Oglevie, Tiffels)
CR - Poturalski (Charlie Curti)
CR - Poturalski (unassisted)
USA - Matthews (Gersich, Noah Hanifin)