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And then there was one.

The Fredericton area will be home to a single New Brunswick Irving Oil Bantam AAA Hockey League entry next season said Hockey New Brunswick District 3 Minor Hockey Council chief Todd Pye.

He said coaches Andy Williams and Eric Bissonnette, who are in the midst of two year contracts, will return to coach the District 3 Servicemaster Clean Caps next season. Wade Wilson's two-year stint as coach of the Fredericton Remax Canadiens has expired, and so have the Canadiens.

"Because we haven't had any luck with the peewee AAA program over the past couple of years, having to keep going back to one team, we've made a conscious decision to next year run with one bantam AAA team only. At the end of next season, we will re-evaluate that decision."

Pye said feedback from both bantam AAA coaching staffs in the district this past season suggested that there wasn't enough depth in the bantam ranks to fill in when bantam AAA players were ill or injured.

"Andy Williams and Wade Wilson will tell you, we ran two teams with a core of seven or eight players on both teams," said Pye. "There was just not enough depth to run two (AAA calibre) teams at that level."

The Remax Canadiens were fourth in the 11-team league with a 14-7-6 record for 34 points. The District 3 Caps were sixth, with a 13-13-1 log for 27 points.

Wilson has already informed the District 3 minor hockey council that he wasn't interested in coaching bantam AAA last season.

"That made the decision very simple," said Pye.

While there is a firm commitment to just a single bantam AAA team next season, Pye said District 3 "will do everything in our power" to ice two peewee AAA teams.

"We're going to send letters out to all the competitive kids who are eligible at the peewee level to our initial tryouts which will be free of charge," he said.

"As far as we're concerned, we're going to go ahead with it now. The only thing that would railroad that is if we don't get anybody to tryouts. But we're going to send personalized letters to every eligible kid in the district...we want kids to commit to this program."

The two-year contract of coach Dave Daley has expired and the peewee AAA coaching position has been advertised, with applications to close this Friday. The Scott MacTavish Realty/Sunbury Transport Canadiens finished atop the league standings last season with a 17-1-2 record for 35 points.

Pye hopes to have coaching staffs in place by early June.

"We're not going to belabour this over the summer," he said. "By the first week of June, it will be all decided."

Kevin Pottle and his coaching staff return to fulfill the second year of their two-year contracts at the midget AAA level. "We're quite happy there, as we always have been," said Pye.

Laurie McNeill will return behind the bench of Fredericton's minor midget AAA Caps. Pye said there will be a meeting May 24 in Moncton to explore a New Brunswick/Nova Scotia minor midget AAA league. The New Brunswick circuit operated with just four teams last season.