Hey, look, no hands!

The famous last words of an eight-year-old before he face plants on his bicycle is the perfect way to describe the Edmonton Oilers these days as they stumble their way through a five-game eastern road trip that is quickly heading south.

The Oilers went splat again Saturday afternoon in New Jersey, where the Devils spanked them in every possible way you can spank a visiting hockey team.

Jersey scored three seconds into a power play, scored a shorthand back-breaker, chopped in two at even strength and scored into an empty net while the bewildered Oilers looked like they had cinder blocks at the end of their arms and blindfolds on their visors.

It was 4-1 when the money was on the table before two Edmonton goals in garbage time and a Jersey empty netter made it 5-3.

Make no mistake, the Oilers were lost in every aspect of the game except goaltending.

“Our whole team is a little bit out of sync,” sighed Oilers captain Connor McDavid, still looking for his first goal of the season five games in. “Not a lot of flow to our game. I don’t know, not connected enough, even on the power play and even on five-on-five.”

For the second game in a row (third if you count the fact they were awful against the New York Rangers but Stuart Skinner stole a win), Edmonton was a shadow on offence, a mess on defence and a liability on the power play, allowing a short-handed goal against for the second time in two games.

You’re not going to outscore your mistakes when the formula is one or two goals versus seven or eight egregious turnovers, which has been the case through the last three games.

“When you’re scoring goals and firing on all cylinders you can afford a mistake here and there,” said McDavid. “Obviously we can’t afford any mistakes right now with the way we’re going offensively. We have to find a way to clean up the mistakes first and get ourselves going offensively.”

Heading into this one, the Oilers were 30th in the league in goals per game and 32nd in the league in five-on-five goals (four in four games). McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were each without an even-strength goal, Draisaitl without an even-strength point.

And not much changed against the Devils. At least not when it mattered. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored his second of the game with 3:30 left in the third period to make it 4-2 and, after New Jersey made it 5-2 on the empty-netter, Curtis Lazar added some cosmetic damage with three seconds left.

In the heart of this game, when they needed a goal, it wasn’t there.

The lack of offence is not a new issue. It plagued the Oilers plenty of times last season as the notion that they are this explosive offensive machine slowly runs out of steam.

Fact is, despite having two or three of the best offensive players in the world, they are just a slightly better than average offence.

Last season they were 11th in the NHL in goals per game, 12th in the NHL on the power play and 13th in the NHL in five-on-five offence.

Good, not great.

And now, after losing five forwards from last season and playing without an injured Zach Hyman, the offence is struggling to find its footing.

It’s only five games into the schedule, but McDavid warns against shrugging this off as early-season settling in. There are some fundamental issues that need to be cleaned up here. Remember, it was last year’s team that made it to the Final; this year’s team hasn’t proven anything yet.

“These two points still count,” said McDavid. “We talk about getting off to a good start and we want to get off to a good start. These games matter and we didn’t find a way to win — or get better today.

“Maybe the second part is a little more important than the first. Results matter, but I didn’t like that we didn’t seem to get any better today.”

TOO MANY MISTAKES

When the team isn’t scoring, you can’t be giving the other side free chances but the Oilers are lost in space on defence, too.

Five-star mistakes from their highest-paid defencemen killed them against the Devils. It started on a power play, when Evan Bouchard pinched at the blue line to join a puck battle, allowing former Oilers forward Connor Brown to get behind him for the third breakaway goal (and second short-handed) that Bouchard’s given up in the last two games.

Moments later, Calvin Pickard made a save of the month to keep New Jersey from scoring two short-handed goals on the same man advantage.

When the power play is 1-for-12, with two short-handed goals against in the last four games, it’s tough to win.

“That’s two games now where we had a chance on the power play to really make a difference,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We were up 2-1 against the Islanders, a 3-1 lead would have been huge. Unfortunately they score to make it 2-2.

“Very similar situation tonight — we’re down 2-1 in the third period with an opportunity to make it 2-2 and we give up a short-handed goal and it’s 3-1.”

A Darnell Nurse turnover a few minutes later made it another breakaway and a 4-1 deficit on a night when Edmonton’s best players simply weren’t even close to good enough.

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com