The phrase "a canny operator" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe someone who is shrewd, clever, or skilled at managing situations, often in a business or strategic context.
Example: "In the competitive world of finance, she proved to be a canny operator, always staying one step ahead of her rivals."
Alternatives: "a shrewd player" or "a savvy strategist."
But Zecha is a canny operator.
For all her talk of consumption, scalpings, smallpox and sleeper agents, she's clearly a canny operator.
A canny operator, he made five appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show in 12 months.
Maybe that's just because he's a canny operator who knows when he's being filmed.
Even the Observer's food critic, Jay Rayner, concedes that Greggs is a canny operator.
A canny operator, she often provided a home for artists disillusioned by their dealings with her rivals.
Rangers, though, employed a cannier operator, who, after noting the situation, waited outside the siblings' place of work, to discover a level of strapping that negated any concern.
No one forced Judi Dench to star in Gregory Doran's RSC production of Merry Wives - the Musical in Stratford over Christmas at the precise time that a cannier operator might have left herself free to campaign for a second Oscar, this time for Notes on a Scandal.
This will be the unbeaten Calzaghe's first fight in America, as well as his first as a light-heavyweight, and the sense of him crossing uncertain territory is sure to be highlighted in the long week ahead by Hopkins, a relentlessly canny operator who has transformed himself from a violent convict to a master of ring psychology.
Sarah Coyte doesn't have a lot of pace but she is a very canny operator and eventually her nagging line and prodigious wobble pay dividends as she entices Heather Knight to drive loosely at a full ball and nick off to Meg Lanning at first slip.
But Duncan was also a very canny operator.
