However, the season came to an end as the Indians went on to lose six of their last seven games, five of them by one run, missing the playoffs by only two games.

However, the roots of the curse likely date back earlier to the end of the 1968 season when the blue-shirted Cowboys were upset badly by the Cleveland Browns in the divisional playoffs.

However, the Vikings lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the playoffs, 17 – 14, on a controversial touchdown pass from the Cowboys ' quarterback Roger Staubach to wide receiver Drew Pearson that became known as the Hail Mary.

However, the Arizona Cardinals completed a game winning touchdown on 4th and 28 with 0: 00 left knocking the Vikings out of the playoffs.

However, the team would come up short in the playoffs again, blowing a fourth quarter lead at home in a 24 – 21 loss to the New England Patriots.

However, the Chargers were beaten, 38-10, by the Detroit Lions to drop their record to 7-8 and eliminate the possibility of being in the playoffs.

However, he recovered and led the Raiders to victory in 9 of their last 11 games in the season, qualifying for the playoffs as a wild card team.

However, after a narrow 21-20 win against the Giants, the Cowboys regained their dominating form, trouncing the Arizona Cardinals ( who were playing their home games at Sun Devil Stadium ) 37-13 on Christmas night at Arizona as part of Monday Night Football, and then cruising through the playoffs with convincing wins against the Eagles and the Packers.

However, he performed very well in the playoffs, notably when he scored a hat trick in game seven of the Campbell Conference Finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

However, they lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Chicago Bears, 23 – 19.

However, under current president and general manager Lou Lamoriello, the Devils have made the playoffs all but three times between 1988 and 2012, including thirteen berths in a row from 1997 to 2010.

However, playing in a division where the same three teams — the Flyers, Capitals and Islanders — made the playoffs every year for six years running meant that the Devils found themselves in a losing battle with the Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins for the division's last playoff spot.

However, 1987 marked the first season that the opening round of the playoffs was a best-of-7 series instead of a best-of-5 series.

However, the management committee was not nearly as patient as Boe and Pickett had been, and forced Torrey to resign after the Islanders missed the playoffs again that season.

However, after the Islanders finished 12 points short of the playoffs in 1997-98, Milstein and Gluckstern decided to run the team on an austere budget in an attempt to make a profit.

However, the Penguins went 27 – 34 – 13, missing the playoffs and ending with the third worst record in the league.

However, the team spent four more years out of the playoffs after his arrival.

However, they were eliminated from the playoffs on April 18, being swept by the New York Rangers in four straight games in the Conference Quarterfinals, in what would be their first and only playoff appearance.

However, Mourning was suspended for Game 5 due to elbowing Scottie Pippen in the head ; the Bulls would defeat the Miami Heat in the playoffs for the second consecutive year.

However, the Magic were defeated 3 – 1 in the first round of the playoffs by the Charlotte Hornets led by Baron Davis.

However, the Sixers couldn't find the form that pushed them to the playoffs last year.

However, Charlotte was bounced from the playoffs in the first round, falling to the Chicago Bulls in four games.

However, they were again swept by the Celtics in the playoffs.

However, a late-season 12 – 2 surge allowed them to finish 41 – 41 and qualify for the 2006 playoffs as the seventh seed.

However, the team initially took a step backward, losing in the first round of the 1986 playoffs to the more athletic Atlanta Hawks.

However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of the proletarian movement as " putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas ", he lost his enthusiasm for painting.

However, in that decade, progressive reformers such as Alcott, influenced by Pestalozzi as well as Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Friedrich Herbart, began to advocate writing about subjects from students ' personal experiences.

However, he continued his slave trading career until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.

However, his public life began with the accession of his third brother, Æthelred of Wessex, in 866.

However, the Teutonic Knights began to establish a country independent of the King of Hungary.

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, footy or Aussie rules However, late in the century the code began to decline in New South Wales and Queensland largely due to competition with other more popular football codes, as well as interstate rivalries and the lack of strong local governing bodies.

However, as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns ( especially those who could read and write, the only people whose use of language we now know ), the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and autumn, as well as fall, began to replace it as a reference to the season.

However, even prior to his death, the empire began to unravel.

However, the growing influence of Latin began to drive Basque out from the less mountainous portions of the region.

However, sealed trains began carrying large numbers of prisoners to the Soviet Gulags.

However, relations began to break down.

However, after 1998, it began to describe the drink as Cuba Libre – literally translated as " Free Cuba " which is the original name of the drink and how it's mostly called in Latin America.

However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state.

However most of the colleges began in the mid-1960s as a response education and training for the then emerging baby boom generation, and to provide training to the post second World War II European immigrants and newer immigrants from around the world, that were starting to enter the country.

However, as attendance began to dwindle — the Rockies fell to just sixth in the National League in attendance in 2002, and ninth in 2003 and 2004 — the club could no longer afford to build through big-name free agents.

However, Khrushchev and Malenkov were able to gather enough support for Beria's ouster, but only when a rumour of a potential coup led by Beria began to take hold within the party leadership.

However, many readers recognized Barks ' work and drawing style, and began to call him the Good Duck Artist, a label which stuck even after his true identity was discovered by fans in the late 1950s.

However, when the price of silver rose, the East India Company began to manufacture a product that was desired by the Chinese as much as tea was by the British: opium.

However, Cortés cut down Coanacoch, the last to be hanged, after his brother began rallying his warriors.

However, later in 1966, Brian Wilson began work on the Smile album, which was intended as a narrative.

However, during the same period, a group of ambitious producers began working outside the boundaries of DOC regulations to make what they believed would be a higher quality style of Chianti.

However, by 1704 the Province of Pennsylvania had grown so large that their representatives wanted to make decisions without the assent of the Lower Counties and the two groups of representatives began meeting on their own, one at Philadelphia, and the other at New Castle.

However, they soon began to loot the holy places of Lhasa, which brought a swift response from Emperor Kangxi in 1718 ; but his military expedition was annihilated by the Dzungars, not far from Lhasa.

However, it would not be until the early 1970s that courses began to crop up in various places in the Midwest and the East Coast ( some perhaps through Sappenfield's promotion efforts, others probably independently envisioned ).

However, it would soon come around to a more moderate standpoint and while preserving a hard-line attitude to armed struggle, the party began theorizing on various compromise solutions.