Big Themes from Day 1 of Free Agency

The hockey world was quickly disabused of any lingering concerns about whether this year's free agency would match the relatively subdued one we endured last off-season.

Despite the fact that the same limitations stemming from the flat cap environment are still in place, teams showed no qualms about getting out there and throwing money around like it's burning a hole in their pockets. 

At the time of writing this, on Wednesday evening, Cap Friendly currently has us trending towards $800-million in contract dollars. By the time you're reading this, it'll almost certainly have exceeded that figure as it continues to rise with each browser refresh. 

If you struggled to keep up with everything that was happening, we tried valiantly to keep you apprised of all of the important stuff. Now that things are starting to slow down a little bit, we can take some more time to sort through it all in finer detail. Let's take a closer look at a couple of day one themes that caught my eye in particular.