Rangers acquire goalie Raanta from Blackhawks

The New York Rangers acquired goalie Antti Raanta from the Chicago Blackhawks in a trade for forward prospect Ryan Haggerty on Saturday.

Raanta, 26, is 20-8-5 with a 2.41 goals-against average and .912 save percentage in 39 NHL games, all with Chicago.

"At first you get a little bit excited, because it's a great opportunity," Raanta told the Chicago Sun-Times. "But it's a little sad also. It's a great organization in Chicago, and everybody has been great to me. They gave me an opportunity to play hockey, and to win the Stanley Cup. But I'm looking forward and I'm excited to go to New York and get a fresh start again."

New York opens the 2015-16 season at Chicago on Oct. 7, when the Blackhawks will raise their latest Stanley Cup banner.

"Wow, that's going to be nice," Raanta said. "That's going to be fun. That's good to know right now. All the fans in Chicago, how they have treated me, it'll be nice to be there on that day. Hopefully they put me in the net and I can show what I have."

Raanta started the season as Corey Crawford's backup but was passed on the depth chart by Scott Darling. Raanta will back up Henrik Lundqvist in New York.

"I knew something was going on the whole time," Raanta said of possibly being traded. "At the trade deadline, I was expecting something to happen after that. It was a little bit in my mind, all the time."

The Rangers earlier Saturday traded backup goalie Cam Talbot and a seventh-round pick (No. 209) in the 2015 NHL Draft to the Edmonton Oilers for the Nos. 57, 79 and 184 picks in the draft. Talbot was 21-9-4 with a 2.21 goals-against average and .926 save percentage in 36 games this season, and 16-4-3 with a 2.16 GAA and .929 save percentage while filling in for Lundqvist, who was out with a vascular injury in his neck.

Haggerty, 22, had 15 goals and 18 assists in 76 games with the Hartford Wolf Pack of the American Hockey League this season, his first as a professional. He played three seasons at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.