The 2015 CIS Men's University Cup Hockey Tournament (53rd Annual) was held March 20–23, 2014. It was the first of two consecutive CIS Championships to be held at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax jointly hosted by the St. Francis Xavier University and Saint Mary's University. Each school was a designated 'host' for one of the events; St. Francis Xavier was the 2015 host while Saint Mary's was the host in the second year (2016). The defending champions were the Alberta Golden Bears which advanced to the tournament as the Canada West Champions and #1 seed. New Tournament Format This two-year bid included a format change that saw eight teams compete and the re-introduction of the bronze medal game. Previous tournaments, going back to 1998 (17 seasons), were a 6-team 2-pool format (3 teams per pool) where one team from each pool would advance to the championship final (in some seasons, the runner-up in each pool would play for Bronze). Instead of a pool format, a tradition single elimination 8-team bracket was chosen and the teams seeded 1–8. The tournament length was the same (4 days) with two games on each day (the same half of the bracket per day; 1–8 & 4–5 versus 2–7 & 3–6 with Thursday's winners playing Saturday afternoon and Friday's winners playing Saturday night). The losers of Saturday's semi-finals play in the bronze medal game held prior to the championship final on Sunday. USPORTS announced they would reevaluated the format after the two-year run in Halifax for subsequent years. Tournament Seeding In the previous six-team two-pool format, the conference champions were seeded 1-3 and the remaining three teams were shuffled between the pools based on the CIS balancing criteria to reduce intra-conference match-ups (e.g., when there were only two teams from one conference, they were placed in separate pools, and if a conflict arose based on 1-4-6 vs 2-3-5 placement, the lower seeded team was swapped with a lower seeded team in the other pool to maintain the integrity of the draw). In the new format, teams were seeded based on the last Top 10 Poll (the Saturday/Sunday prior to the tournament). The three conference champions were seeded one through three, with the order based on their rank. The OUA Runner-up (loser of the Queen's Cup) was seeded 4th, regardless of their rank. The remaining four teams are seeded 5-to-8 based on their rank. Teams in