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FAIRBANKS — Wylie Rogers was never nervous in four standout seasons as a goaltender for the Alaska Nanooks hockey team.

On July 8, he will have more butterflies than a meadow. It’s the first day that most decorated goaltender in Nanooks history participates in the Atlanta Thrashers Prospects Camp and gets his first taste of the National Hockey League.

“I’m extremely excited and I’m pretty nervous,” Rogers said Thursday in a telephone interview. “I don’t know what to expect, but I know one thing, I’ll be in the best shape of my life going into it.”

A recommendation by Tavis MacMillan, a U.S. amateur scout for Atlanta and a former Nanooks head coach, to the Thrashers front-office personnel led to the Fairbanks native receiving an invitation to the camp on July 8-14 in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, Ga.

“We were looking for some goaltenders for the camp and I recommended Wylie,” MacMillan said Thursday from Rosemount, Minn., where he now lives with his family. “He’s a competitive kid and he’ll go in and work hard, and that’s what you want in those situations. I thought he’d be a great fit for the camp.”

MacMillan contacted Rogers on Monday and Rogers later consulted with his agent, Al Roy of CMG Sports in St. Louis, about the camp. Roy’s response was a no-brainer.

“He said ‘absolutely!’ It’s a great opportunity and I will get some exposure in an NHL camp,” said Rogers, who also spoke Monday with Dan Marr, Atlanta’s amateur scouting and player development director.

Rogers was grateful to the man who coached him from his freshman through junior seasons for the Nanooks of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association.

“I’m extremely excited and thankful to Tavis for keeping me in my mind,” Rogers said. “He wanted me to be there.”

Rogers holds numerous Nanooks goaltending records, including career marks for shutouts (seven), wins (42), saves (2,960) and minutes (6,174), and single-season standards for saves (923) and saves percentage (.922). He ended his career March 9 by tallying a team and CCHA record 64 saves in a 2-1 triple-overtime loss at Nebraska-Omaha in the third and deciding game of a first-round playoff series.

During his career, Rogers backstopped the Nanooks to third place in the 2005 CCHA Super Six Tournament in Detroit and to wins over four No. 1-ranked teams, with three of the victories on the road.

The participants in the Thrashers Prospects Camp include Atlanta’s recent draft choices, players in its minor league system and free agents like Rogers.

The experience of former Nanooks teammate Kyle Greentree gave Rogers an idea of what to expect in the Thrashers camp. Greentree, a left wing and the Nanooks’ leading scorer from 2004-07, participated in the Philadelphia Flyers training camp last fall and spent most of this season with their American Hockey League club, the Philadelphia Phantoms. Greentree skated in two games with the Flyers.

“Greener told Ferg (current Nanooks head coach Dallas Ferguson) what he went through and he said it was like the hardest week of his life,” Rogers said. “I don’t care what they (Atlanta) do to me; they can put me through hell and I’ll be ready for it. I want to take advantage of the opportunity there.”

In March, Rogers got a sense of what may await him in the Ice Forum in Duluth.

Five days after the thriller against Nebraska-Omaha — the ninth-longest game in NCAA hockey history — Rogers signed with the Utah Grizzlies, the ECHL affiliate of the New York Islanders.

Rogers appeared in eight games for the Grizzlies, who included former Nanooks team captain and defenseman T.J. Campbell, and he compiled a 0-5-3 record with a 4.04 goals against average and .897 saves percentage.

Rogers discovered that the shots are harder at the professional level than they were in college hockey.

“Every guy can shoot the puck,” he said. “Guys make those passes and those passes are caught, and every time, they’re getting off shots from everywhere.”

After he finished playing with Utah, he had a tryout with the Las Vegas Wranglers, a fellow ECHL team that included former Nanooks forwards and teammates Kelly Czuy and Curtis Fraser.

He didn’t stick with the Wranglers, who lost to the Cincinnati Cyclones in the ECHL’s Kelly Cup championship series. He returned to Fairbanks to run his Alaska Edge Goaltending School and work for a local landscaper.

To prepare for the Thrashers camp, Rogers had participants in the Alcan Hockey Camp and former teammates take shots at him last week at the Patty Center. He’s getting further preparation this week in Calgary, Alberta, at the World Pro Goaltending School, where former Nanooks teammate and soon-to-be Alaska senior Chad Johnson also trains.

“It’s just another opportunity to play some pro hockey after getting some experience with Utah,” Rogers said of the Thrashers camp. “This will only give me an accurate and in-depth description of what I could be looking forward to in the future.

“ ... I don’t plan on messing around. This is business now.”

Contact staff writer Danny Martin at 459-7586.