Personally, I don't find a game where a team is leading by 1 goal to be as tense as one that's tied or being down one goal. There's an obvious desperation to being down a goal that makes teams pull out all of the stops while the other team generally relies on what's been working in a given game, especially in series-clinching games (even moreso in game 7!). When you're tied, you're fighting to avoid the Golden Goal or Shootout scenario, where the pressure in my opinion shifts more and more onto the goalie and less so in terms of the agency of the free skaters - I'm unsure if these situations are equally or more tense, it's more the aforementioned sense of agency for certain players that does. I'd also say ties in general are a bit less tense for a team than being down 1 goal in a crucial game just by the notion of thinking "we're going to lose if I can't do something great in the next few minutes."