I use !$ multiple times every day but you just helped me make the connection to try !^ for the first argument and I think I'm going to start using that as well. Thanks!
sudo !!
Another example could be
echo "!!" > myscript
The generic form is !n:m for n-th last command line and m-th argument, with an omitted n being a shortcut for the last line.
Not sure if all of this works the same in bash.