HALIFAX - The University of New Brunswick made it all the way to the 2015 CIS men's hockey final only to watch Alberta celebrate a victory in the championship game.

This year it was different.

The No. 5 Varsity Reds returned to the 2016 CIS championship and defeated the No. 3 St. Francis Xavier X-Men 3-1 on Sunday for the school's sixth national championship.

"The whole year we didn't want to ever have that feeling again," Varsity Reds defenseman Jordan Murray said about last season's crushing defeat.

Earlier this month, the X-Men swept the Varsity Reds in two games for the AUS conference crown.

"We had a little taste of it in the finals at AUS against (the X-Men), and we knew coming in today that we weren't going to let that happen again," added Murray.

Christopher Clapperton opened the scoring for UNB 6:49 into the first period before Zach MacQueen responded for St. Francis Xavier at 19:49.

Francis Beauvillier restored the lead for the Varsity Reds on the power play at 9:02 of the second and Tyler Carroll added insurance just 17 seconds later.

Etienne Marcoux made 22 saves for UNB while Drew Owsley kicked out 27-of-30 shots for StFX.

"A 3-1 game in a national final — it's close, like people expected, but obviously not the result that we wanted," said X-Men coach Brad Peddle.

"But, at the end of the day, it's two good teams going at it again."

Earlier, the No. 8 Saint Mary's Huskies toppled the No. 2 Saskatchewan Huskies 5-2 to claim CIS bronze.

Calder Brooks struck twice for Saint Mary's while Anthony Repaci, Grant Gerrard and Stephen Macaulay added the other goals. Cole Cheveldave made 17 saves for the win.

Saint Mary's was playing for third place after a 4-0 loss to UNB in the semifinals.

Jesse Ross and Josh Roach supplied the scoring for Saskatchewan, which dropped a 2-1 decision in triple overtime against StFX in the semifinals. Jordon Cooke stopped 26-of-31 shots in a losing cause.

With the Saint Mary's capturing the bronze, the AUS swept the top-three spots in the tournament, which has not been accomplished since the same conference did it in 2004.

"It's pretty special for the AUS," said UNB coach Gardiner MacDougall.