Chris Kontos comes to mind as well. Hot season with Lightning but was never anything special in the NHL. Couldnt even get an AHL or top-league contract but had to settle for Div.1 in Sweden and IHL.
Replying to an old post, but it was not the case that Chris Kontos "couldn't even get an AHL contract [and] had to settle for the IHL". At the time IHL affiliates were often an NHL team's top one, preferred over the AHL; e.g. Kontos played for the Muskegon Lumberjacks in '87-'88 and Phoenix Roadrunners in '90-'91 because those were the Penguins and Kings' top affiliates. By the mid-'90s the IHL had expanded to bigger cities and had "big league" aspirations; many of the teams were independent and paid double the salaries AHL contracts did or more; that's why he played in Cincinnati, Quebec and Winnipeg in the mid-'90s.
He sporadically played in Europe because of contract disputes. He held out in '83 after his first season because he didn't make the Rangers' roster after training camp, refusing to be assigned to the Rangers' CHL affiliate in Tulsa and for good reason as the CHL Oilers were a mess behind the scenes. He was persuaded to report eventually, but the Oilers went bankrupt in February of '84 and infamously played the rest of the season on the road while the other CHL teams footed the bills to keep the schedule intact. (They won the championship too.) He held out at the beginning of the '85 season and played in Finland, was traded to the Penguins for Ron Duguay in '87, played about a year for them until he asked to be traded because he was sick of the limited ice time he was being given by the Penguins' coaching staff as mostly a PKer and face-off specialist whilst simultaneously being criticized for "not scoring enough".
When he was traded to the Kings in '88 he scored 1.5 ppg for their AHL affiliate and got a late-season call-up whereupon he scored at a 2 ppg pace (and assisted on both Jimmy Carson and Luc Robitaille's 50th goals of the season). At the beginning of the next year they wouldn't give him a solid NHL contract so he went and played in Switzerland, only persuaded to return by LA coach Robbie Ftorek toward the end of the year again. Same sort of thing happened: he went on a tear, scoring nine goals in 11 playoff games, but back in the minors to begin the next year. He stuck around as a "good little soldier" for a couple years in the minors before calling it quits with the Kings and playing with the Canadian national team instead.
He signed as a free agent with the Lightning, had a good year, got injured toward the end of it and felt he got a crappy contract offer from Phil Esposito (he was reputedly offered triple his '92-'93 salary of $150,000, but that was still less than league average) so he went back to the Canadian national team and played in the Olympics in '94.
He always felt like he was being jerked around by whichever NHL club he happened to be under contract with and was seemingly content to play elsewhere, often for better pay. You'll find that was the case with lots of guys who played in Europe and the IHL in the '90s.
