Come to think of it, the NH moment in 615 wasn't exaggarated in the anime. Naruto and Hinata's expressions were pretty impassive.
Now in this episode, the SS moment wasn't made much of. Again there were no romantic expressions/ hints given in this scene.
Contrast these to last episode. The NS moment was given a romantic vibe. The animators made Naruto beam brightly when he mentioned Sakura was more or less his girlfriend and they also made Sakura smile lovingly when she heard Minato asking her to care for his son.
I wonder whether Kishi has given SP some hints and directions as to where his story is headed. Or maybe SP finally figured out themselves that NS is the obvious endgame pairing.
Well they work closely with the anime team, if anything its possible that the end script details have been given to them and if elements like the ending of the manga sometime in the future (not likely this december) then if part of that includes some form of "sakura loving naruto" and "Naruto and Sakura become a couple" well then they cannot create conflicts from what kishi writes.
I mean in some media, if there is a central script/story bible for the series and a close affiliate needs to make some extension or create new content so it does not conflict with the main canon, then they can. I mean like Halo, for the original games trilogy, the story itself only covers the last 3 months of the 28 year war between the UNSC and Covenant. The rest of the series, mainly the majority of the war, is covered in novels and comics, everything in the halo universe is canon (save one OVA from the legends DVD). The case is, all of these were derived off the story bible but didn't conflict with it, they had 28 years of blank space to fill in which greatly expanded the universe for the war period. In the case of naruto, whenever SP wanted to do something filler or add some other new scene, it had to be so that it would not conflict with the manga or change what kishi originally did.
I mean I guess you can say, in the 235 filler, they were able to make Naruto say he still loved sakura and would try to win her over, because this was not in conflict with his character, even though it was after the land of iron, he was still loving her in this case. If Naruto said he loved Hinata though this would be a conflict because at the time, nothing even came forward for it in the manga.
So it could be that perhaps the main details of the end plot have been given to SP, I mean its not impossible. They could still jerk around on a few parts but not change it to a radical extent like the trash ep 166 was.
Though I must say, I like the salty tears of SS fans making a fuss over Sasuke not smirking, did the term Sasuke doesn't give a kitten about Sakura still not connect in their minds? He doesn't care, he doesn't love her, that doesn't mean he is heartless and would just see someone get killed but how hard is it to understnad he doesn't love or like her, he doesn't have hidden feelings, I mean its not like things are going to be better for SS anytime soon, did these guys just forget the next episode has Sakura NOT trusting Sasuke? The start of the sinking SS spree? All I know is some people are salty on tumblr and over such a tiny moment, man why is fan rage so funny to hear from the other fandoms? I'm suprised the other fandoms still try to put unbelievable expectations on SS and to another degree NH, maybe they just keep disappointing themselves?