No but most people just don ' t care <| sep |> a hit to the head is a 5 min major . a double minor 4 min penalties only happen for high sticks that draw blood . hockey players also don ' t even bother to do their helmets up appropriately , so they are never secured and fall off when they get hit all the time and they jam the visors way up so they don ' t have to look through them sometimes . and right now in the NHL it is not the players choice they HAVE to wear a visor coming in now . only the old guys with grandfathered in rules and equipment can not wear visors . but the reason they are there is mostly to stop people from taking pucks and sticks to the face , so they are more flexible and have more give than anything , so if they were used in a football sense the chance of them breaking and cutting someone is a huge risk .